Parliamentarians queued up to cast votes as polling starts

30 Jul, 2013

ISLAMABAD: Parliamentarians mostly from Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and allies Tuesday queued up in National Assembly hall to cast their vote for electing new president.

Chief Justice Islamabad High Court Justice Muhammad Anwar Khan Kasi is supervising the polling process, which started at 10:15 am in National Assembly Hall.

The voting is being cast through secret ballot. The joint session of the parliament has already been summoned to enable the both members of Senate and National Assembly to cast their votes.

The polling is likely to continue till 3 pm. Results announcement is also expected Tuesday night.

National Assembly Hall has already been converted into polling hall.

The ruling party PML-N's Mamnoon Hussain and opposition party PTI's candidate Justice (R) Wajihuddin are in one-to-one contest for the office of president after the PPP boycotted the election and withdrew its candidate Senator Raza Rabbani.

A total of 324 members of National Assembly and 103 of Senate are to vote in the presidential election. However with the boycott of PPP, ANP, BNP-Awami and PML-Q, the turnout in the Senate will be drastically down.

The PML-N dominates the National Assembly. However, it has very thin presence in Senate where opposition led by PPP holds the control of the House but it announced to remain absent from parliament, thus a very low turnout is expected in Senate.

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