Senate elections in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Tuesday were postponed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) following Opposition members' plea filed amid their stand off with the provincial government over the oath-taking of MPAs-elect on the reserved seats.
Meanwhile, polling at the National Assembly and the Punjab and Sindh assemblies was underway on the remaining vacant seats, as the country's ruling alliance eyes a two-thirds majority in the upper house of Parliament.
The voting for senate seats began at 9am and is set to continue till 4pm. Meanwhile, the 11 candidates in Balochistan have been elected unopposed.
The polling was scheduled to be conducted to elect 48 senators, initially, 11 each from KP and Balochistan, 12 each from Punjab and Sindh and two from Islamabad.
However, after the unopposed election of 18 senators from Punjab and Balochistan, now the elections will be held for 30 vacant seats and 59 candidates are in the field to reach the Senate.
While arrangements for Senate elections were complete in the KP assembly with ECP staff present to conduct polls, the Opposition members submitted an application to the provincial election commissioner for postponing the elections.
Pakistan Peoples Party's (PPP) Ahmad Karim Kundi, in the plea, said 25 of his party's members have not yet been sworn in and requested that the polls be postponed.
Instead of complying with the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) recent order to administer the oath to the legislators-elect, KP Speaker Babar Saleem Swati filed a review petition with the court on the eve of the polling.
