ISLAMABAD: For electing the 13th President of the country, the polling process in the Parliament House and all four provincial assemblies has been completed while the counting of votes is going on.The voting process was held through a secret ballot by the two chambers of the national parliament, the National Assembly and Senate and the four provincial assemblies.
Chief Election Commissioner, Justice (R) Qazi Muhammad Farooq conducted the proceedings as Returning Officer for election to the Office of the President. At the Parliament House, members from both the Houses, Senate and National Assembly, cast their votes to elect the President, being the Electoral College for Presidential election.
Chief Election Commissioner and Returning Officer briefed the members of Senate and National Assembly about the voting procedure before the start of the polling and their names were called according to alphabetical order for voting.
Polling began at 10-10 am today and continued up to 03-00 pm.
First, senators cast their votes and then the members of the National Assembly cast the votes.
In the NWFP Assembly, 124 votes were cast and at one moment the polling was stopped when an MPA Nargis Sameen showed her ballot paper.
However, the polling process restarted after chief minister Amir Haider Hoti and others controlled the situation.
According to the unofficial results of the polling in the NWFP Assembly, Asif Ali Zardari obtained 107 votes, Justice ( R ) Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui got 10 and Mushahid Hussain Syed won three votes while four votes were rejected.
In all, the electoral votes in the NWFP Assembly were 65 out of which 56 went to Asif Zardari.
In Sindh Assembly, 163 MPAs out of 166 cast their votes while three MPAs - Arbab Ghulam Rahim, Imdad Ali Shah and Nadir Magsi – were absent from the house.
MPA Ruqayya Soomro cast her vote despite serious illness as she came on stretcher in the Assembly to set a new example
