General elections in Pakistan to be held in Jan 2024, says ECP

ISLAMABAD – The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has announced that next general elections in the country would be held in last week of January 2024.

The announcement comes as the political parties, including Pakistan Peoples Party, were demanding the top electoral body to give a date for elections.

Elections in Pakistan were originally scheduled to be held by November after the outgoing government of prime minister Shehbaz Sharif dissolved the National Assembly on August 9. However, the ECP opted to delimit the electoral constituencies based on the results of a digital census conducted in April this year, delaying the polls to next year.

However, the general elections have been delayed by the ECP as it is hold fresh delimitations of constituencies in line with the new census.

The electoral body in a statement said that initial list of delimitation of constituencies will be released on September 27, adding that final list will be issued on November 30 after hearing public objections on it.  

It said elections will be held in last week of January. 

Earlier this week, the ECP announced that the number of voters in the country had increased by 22 million as compared to 2018.

On Tuesday, the ECP revealed the updated “province-wise voter statistics from 2018 to 2023” as of July 25, 2023 and revealed that the number of voters had increased to 126.9 million from 105.95 million in 2018.

The overall number of male voters had risen from 59.22 million in 2018 to 68.50 million in 2023, according to the ECP. Likewise, the count of female voters had gone up from 46.73 million to 58.47 million.