*ISLAMABAD: Amid milieu of electioneering as general elections areapproaching near, a senior official of the Election Commission of Pakistanbelieves there is a possibility that the polls could be sabotaged.*
Making a statement before the Senate Standing Committee on Interior aboutsecurity arrangements for the election day (July 25), ECP Secretary BabarYaqoob said: “We think that efforts will be made to sabotage elections inPakistan.”
He cited that during the 2013 elections, there were security issues, notonly in Quetta, where a district election commissioner died in a bombblast, but there were also grenade attacks at five places in Balochistan.
He said the training of ECP staffers were currently underway about thesecurity.
The ECP has already decided that security cameras would be installed atmost sensitive polling stations during the upcoming general elections forfour days. It was decided in a meeting to review progress over procurementof security cameras for installation, provision of missing facilities atpolling stations and availability of sufficient polling staff.
He said the ECP had decided to install surveillance cameras at 20,000 ofthe 85,000 polling stations across the country. But more cameras could beinstalled in view of an emergency requirement.
He ruled out the possibility of deployment of armed forces personnel at allpolling stations.
Couple of weeks ago, the ECP finalized and published the finaldelimitation of the constituencies of the national and provincialassemblies.
According to ECP officials, the electoral body received 1286 objectionsduring thirty days till 3rd of the last month, out of which 689 objectionswere received from Punjab, 284 from Sindh, 181 from KP, 104 fromBalochistan, 17 from Islamabad while 11 objections from FATA.
According to the final delimitation 2018, there will be 272 constituenciesof the National Assembly while 297 constituencies for Punjab Assembly, 130for Sindh Assembly, 99 for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly and 51 forBalochistan Assembly.