Pakistan's ruling party leads Gilgit-Baltistan polls

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is leading in the Pakistani Kashmir's Gilgit-Baltistan legislative assembly polls as the vote count got underway on Tuesday, a media report said.

Early results showed that PML-N has won 10 seats, followed by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), both having won four seats each, GEO News reported.

Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM) and Tehreek-e-Islami won two seats each, as did two Independent candidates.

According to Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), there were 618,364 registered voters in the region with 288,889 female voters and 329,475 male voters.

A total of 278 candidates were in the fray for the 24 assembly seats.

The PML-N and the PTI gave party tickets to candidates in all constituencies, while candidates from the PPP were contesting on 22 seats.

The MWM had 15 contesting candidates, All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) 13, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) 10, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) seven, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) six, and Tehreek-e-Islami had 12 candidates.

The Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly was created through a presidential order in 2009 and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) won the subsequent elections, completing a five-year term in office.

An interim government was set up in December 2014 to conduct the elections.

-- Indo-Asian News Service

da/ksk/py/vm