PESHAWAR: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has set the winning tone for the General Elections 2018 with the NA-4 victory.
PTI candidate Arbab Amir Ayub is winning with a massive margin in NA-4 by-poll after unofficial results of 255 polling stations out of 269.
According to the unofficial results, PTI bagged 43331 votes, PML-N got 23544 and ANP received 23256 votes.
Counting for the by-poll was underway after the voting ended peacefully at 05:00pm.
The local district administration has announced a public holiday in the constituency today.
According to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), 100 polling booths are using the EVMs alongside the manual voting process.
Six political and eight independent candidates are vying for the MNA slot; they include PTI’s Arbab Amir Ayub, Asad Gulzar — late incumbent Gulzar Khan’s son — for Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Awami National Party’s (ANP) Khushdil Khan, Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JI) Wisal Farooq, Tehreek-e-Labaik’s Allama Shafiq Amini, and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) Nasir Khan Moosa Zai.
Apart from 1,400 army personnel, around 4,500 police officials were stationed for security in and around the polling stations.
The seat had fallen vacant owing to the death of PTI’s dissident MNA Gulzar Khan. The month-long election campaign came to an end Tuesday night with the 14 candidates and their supporters using every means to seek votes. It is generally believed that the real contest would be among PTI’s Arbab Amir Ayub, PML-N candidate Nasir Khan Musazai and Khushdil Khan of ANP.
The three candidates have certain strong points in their favour that gave them an edge over their other rivals. Arbab Amir despite being a newcomer in the PTI has the full support of the ruling party in the province.
His elder brother Abab Mohammad Zahir remained three-time MNA and two-time member provincial assembly from the same constituency from the platform of ANP. His family enjoys good influence in the area.
Nasir Musazai as the nominee of the PML-N has the backing of the federal government. He got support of good number of people in the constituency by carrying out development projects, especially in supplying gas and electrification with the support of PML-N provincial head Amir Muqam. He was the runner-up during the previous general election and had bagged over 20,000 votes against Gulzar Khan.