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Islamabad — Pakistan’s election commission has cancelled the result of a local poll in the country’s restive north-west after women were barred from casting their ballots.
Local elections were held on May 7 across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan’s deeply conservative north western province which has long been plagued by militancy.
In Lower Dir district a member of the Islamist Jamat-e-Islami party 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) cancelled the result.
“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 the north-west 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 conservative, rural parts of Pakistan, particularly within the tribal belt, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Baluchistan province.—AFP
Online Reporter