The historic elections in the areas that were embroiled in conflict for almost two decades remained peaceful and free from any major controversy over the quality of the electoral process, says a preliminary report issued by the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen).
However, the report says these elections did not yield a turnout that was expected, which was 6.3% lower than the turnout for National Assembly seats on July 25 last year.
Partly due to warm weather that discouraged people from leaving homes in the afternoon to vote in some constituencies, the reason for the low turnout may also be attributed to an increase in the number of total voters registered in these districts, by 285,976 in June.
A majority of these voters may just be part of the diaspora from these districts, who are now residing in other parts of Pakistan, and only allocated to their permanent addresses in compliance with the provisions of the Elections Act 2017.
If the turnout is calculated on the basis of the registered voters prior to this addition, it remained almost the same as it was on July 25, 2018.
A gender disaggregation of the turnout suggests almost 20% of women voters turned out to vote in this election, compared to 23.8% on July 25 last year.
Similarly, around 33% of male voters voted in this election, compared to 40.3% in the general elections.
These turnout figures are, however, based on information that have been received from 14 constituencies.
The election followed a competitive campaign with almost all major political parties vying for majority of the 16 Provincial Assembly seats.
Supervised directly by Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) officials as district returning officers and returning officers, the crucial election processes before and on the polling day were largely managed in accordance with the provisions of the Elections Act 2017.
Fafen deployed a total of 953 trained observers (858 men and 95 women) to observe the voting process at 1,617 (85% of the total) polling stations, and counting at half of them.
Amid security fears, the overall environment on the polling day remained peaceful, with the observers reporting three incidents of violence in Khyber, Mohmand, and Kurram leading to interruptions to the voting process.
In PK-105 Khyber-I and PK-109 Kurram-I, the observers reported clashes between workers of rival candidates.
Two persons were reportedly injured due to an incident involving firearms outside a polling station in PK-103 Mohmand-I.
A media outlet also reported an incident involving firearms on an independent candidate in South Waziristan.
However, Fafen could not confirm the report through its observers.
The conduct of the polling staff and security officials was observed to generally have remained in line with the provisions of the law and their respective codes.
However, the observers reported interruptions to the voting process at some polling stations due to inadequately-trained staff and shortage of election material.
In addition, the observers also reported certain irregularities of electoral law, rules and codes from multiple constituencies such as canvassing and campaigning outside polling stations, oversized polling stations, and provision of transportation to voters by candidates.
The ECP had set up 1,896 polling stations for 2,798,277 registered voters, averaging one polling station for 1,476 voters.
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