Over 50 per cent of polling stations for the February 8 general elections in Pakistan have been declared "sensitive", officials said on Monday.

According to officials, a total of 90,675 polling stations are being set up across the country, and 46,000 have been declared sensitive. Over 18,000 of them have been declared "highly sensitive".

In Punjab, 12,580 polling stations have been declared sensitive and over 6,000 are highly sensitive.

In Sindh, 6,545 are sensitive, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 6,166 are sensitive and 4,143 are highly sensitive.

In Balochistan, the total number of polling stations is 5,028, out of which 2,337 have been declared sensitive and 1,730 highly sensitive.

A senior official of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) told Dawn that these statistics are tentative and may see some changes after the submission of security plans by the respective district police officers (DPOs).

“The ECP may direct the government to install surveillance cameras in each polling booth of the most sensitive polling stations to record poll proceedings, counting of vote process and preparation of results by the presiding officer, besides taking other appropriate security measures,” he said and added the respective provincial governments will be asked to install these security cameras.

PPP objections The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has raised serious objections to the introduction of a “completely new and unfamiliar” electronic transmission of results — the Election Management System (EMS) for the upcoming February 8 elections in the country.