ISLAMABAD (Web Desk) – The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has cancelled the result of recent local polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s PK-95 constituency of Lower Dir after women were barred from exercising their votes.
On May 7, not a single woman voter out of 53,000 registered voters had casted their votes.
A member of Jamaat-e-Islami was elected, but it emerged that women in the area had been prevented from voting.
After objections by civil society groups, women’s rights organisations and the media, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) declared the result null and void.
“The by-election of constituency No PK-95 Lower Dir-II is hereby declared void for the reasons of disenfranchisement of female voters,” the ECP said in its official notice issued late on Tuesday.
“New election schedule shall be announced in accordance with law, in due course.”
Activists welcomed the decision. “There was a verbal agreement among the political parties to bar women from voting,” Shad Bibi, a women’s rights campaigner and former councillor from the area, said.
“We welcome this decision of declaring the poll void but demand that better arrangements be made next time to facilitate women voters.”
It is not the first time a Pakistani election result has been overturned because women have been stopped from voting.
A court in KPK withheld by-election results in two constituencies in 2013 and ordered the arrest of elders who had prevented women from voting.
Female election turnout is usually weak in the most rural parts of Pakistan, particularly within the tribal belt, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan province.
