ECP sets ward delimitation for Quetta and Kharian cantonment boards
Quetta moves from Class-II to Class-I and Kharian from Class-III to Class-II, with 10 wards fixed in Quetta and five in Kharian under notifications issued on 29 October.
The Election Commission of Pakistan has notified delimitation schedules for the Quetta and Kharian cantonment boards, after the federal government moved both up a class, Dawn reported.
Quetta Cantonment Board has been reclassified from Class-II to Class-I. Kharian, in Punjab, has gone from Class-III to Class-II. Reclassification changes the number of wards a board is divided into.
Three notifications issued on 29 October fix 10 wards in Quetta and five in Kharian. The delimitation exercise in both boards will run from November this year until January 2027, according to the schedule Dawn published.
Delimitation sets the boundaries of each ward so that an elected member represents a defined set of residents. Cantonment boards cannot hold member elections until the exercise is complete and the ward lists are published.
The commission has not announced polling dates for either board. The notifications cover the ward schedule alone, and the schedule as reported carries no voting date.
Quetta is the capital of Balochistan, and Kharian is a town in Punjab. Both are run by cantonment boards, the local government system for urban areas under military administration, where a station commander heads the board and elected members sit alongside official members. The ECP conducts elections for these boards.
Dawn reported that the ECP issued all three notifications on the same day and fixed the ward counts for both boards together. The report did not give the population figures behind the new ward numbers, or the number of registered voters in either cantonment.
Under the notified schedule, the delimitation work continues to January 2027.
Information ministry blames Kabul inaction for strained Pakistan-Afghanistan ties
The ministry rejected a Taliban spokesperson's account of the dispute, saying cross-border militancy remains the biggest obstacle to normal relations between the neighbours.
Tarar proposes national council on cyber security and digital literacy
The information minister used the PTA's Cyber Security Awareness Week to float a coordinating body and to call for digital literacy in school curricula.
Health minister says barcode scan will flag fake medicines from November
Mustafa Kamal told the National Assembly that hospitals will also have to buy all vaccines from Pakistan's own funds by 2030, at a cost of about $1.2 billion.
Fakhar Zaman hits century and passes 4,000 ODI runs
The Pakistan batter reached 4,000 one-day international runs in his 97th ODI and became the 16th from his country to pass the mark.