ECP receives above 7,000 nomination papers by the end of deadline

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan has received nomination papers from more than 7,000 candidates by the end of the extended deadline (12:00 AM April 1, 2013) as against 15,000 filed in year 2008, Geo News reported.
According to the ECP spokesman, around 2,013 nomination papers had been received for National Assembly while around 4,029 papers had been received for provincial assemblies.
He said out of those 7,000 nomination papers received, 2,547 have been scrutinized, adding that the scrutiny of 957 candidates for National Assembly had been completed.
Around 43 candidates hailing from different political parties have so far submitted their nomination papers for two constituencies of federal capital.




The number of nomination papers filed dropped by above 50 percent election-on-election basis. It must be mentioned that as many as 15,000 candidates had lodged nomination forms with the ECP five years back, however, for Election 2013 only above 7,000 wannabe-lawmakers submitted papers.
Experts attribute this drop to the tougher preconditions set by ECP this time around.
Earlier on Sunday, the Election Commission of Pakistan extended the deadline for submission of the election nomination papers till 12:00 AM April 1, 2013.
Even earlier, the ECP had set the deadline of 1600 hours on Sunday
but the ECP spokesman said the deadline has been extended to
facilitate the prospective candidates.
The ECP had asked the Returning Officers to receive nomination papers till midnight on 31st March, 2013 and should keep their offices open in order to facilitate the candidates.
The second phase of the elections would start on Monday with the scrutiny of nomination papers submitted by the candidates.
The ECP would carry out the scrutiny of nomination papers from April 1 to 7.