PAKISTAN TO HOLD GENERAL ELECTIONS ON JULY 25

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will hold its general elections on July 25, a notification issued by the country’s election commission has stated. Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi gave the date his go-ahead on Wednesday.

The announcement comes ahead of the expiry of the PML-N government term on May 31.

The commission also announced its polling scheme, with 86,436 polling stations to be set up across the country, including 48,667 in Punjab, 18,647 in Sindh, 14,655 in Khyber-pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and 4,467 in Balochistan.

However, who will be named caretaker prime minister is yet to be decided. Despite several meetings between Abbasi and the leader of the opposition, a consensus candidate could not be agreed upon. Opposition leader Khurshid Shah told reporters on Tuesday that he wanted the matter to be decided by Parliament.

If Abbasi and Shah fail to reach a consensus on a candidate, they will have to make public three names each. The six nominees will then be referred to a parliamentary committee, which will be formed by the National Assembly speaker.

Prior to meeting the opposition, Abbasi had met ousted premier Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif to discuss candidates for the post of caretaker prime minister. A senior PML-N leader had told Dawn that the meeting was of the view that it did not make much difference whether the party proposed a name for the post “as everyone knows who would control him at the end of the day”.