SHANGLA - Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate Shaukat Ali Yousufzai has won the re-polling in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) provincial seat in Shangla by a margin of 20,000 votes.
According to reports, the votes cast in all 135 polling stations have been counted and based on the unconfirmed results the PTI candidate managed to bag 45,946 votes.
This gave him a margin of victory of over 20,289 votes against his closest rival, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Muhammad Rishad Khan with 25,667 votes. Re-polling in the constituency kicked off earlier in the day. According to the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) provincial wing, the voting process began at 8am and continued till 6pm without pause.
Owing to poor turnout of women, the top poll body had cancelled the results of the July 25 elections in PK-23. Of the 86,698 women registered to vote only 3,505 women had cast their vote in the restive, mountainous yet conservative district of the province. This was less than the 10 per cent of the total votes polled in the constituency — 69,827, as mandated by the Elections Act 2017.
“If the turnout of women voters is less than ten per cent of the total votes polled in a constituency, the commission may presume that the women voters have been restrained through an agreement from casting their votes and may declare, polling at one or more polling stations or election in the whole constituency, void,” reads the act.