Former Pakistan Prime Minister and PMl-N chief Nawaz Sharif and his rival Imran Khan of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf on Saturday night won from their respective constituencies.
Sharif won the Sargodha seat from his stronghold Punjab province and his party was reported to be leading in 110 of the 203 seats for which trends were available.
Polling was held for 272 seats in the National Assembly.
Cricketer-turned-politician Khan won Peshawar-I constituency even as his party led in 32 seats.
Earlier in the day bombings and street clashes left at least 32 people dead and over 200 others injured as millions of Pakistanis defied Taliban threats and voted to elect a new Parliament and four Provincial Assemblies.
However, Election officials admitted on Saturday that they failed to hold free and fair polls in the country’s largest city of Karachi, where voting was marred by two blasts and other incidents of violence.
The violent run-up to the elections left at least 100 people, including three candidates, dead in terror attacks after the Taliban told Pakistanis to boycott the elections.
The Taliban vowed more attacks on Saturday. The threats forced most political parties to confine themselves to limited public canvassing and to go for appeals through electronic media.
A staggering 75,000 security personnel, including 5,000 troops were deployed for sensitive polling stations in Taliban-dominated restive areas in northwest, to ensure smooth voting. Whereas, women were stopped from voting at some of the polling stations in Punjab and the Taliban stronghold in the northwestern tribal district of North Waziristan, reports said. Not a single woman cast her vote in Sahiwal’s polling station number 15 where a total of 645 women were registered. “It is a tradition of the villagers to bar women from voting, one which was started by tribal elders 35 years ago,” the Dawn reported. Sahiwal is located in Pakistan's Punjab province.
The Election Commission had extended the voting time by one hour till 6 pm (local time) as large number of voters were seen standing in queues to exercise their franchise.
A total of 4,670 candidates contested for the 342-member National Assembly while nearly 11,000 are running for the four provincial assemblies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan.
The main contenders are the PPP, which has been ruling the country, PMl-N led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf headed by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.
The Election Commission termed the turnout as “very good” across the country in general without specifying the precise figure. The process of counting of votes began as polling closed and the trends are expected by Sunday morning.
Malala Yousufzai, teenage rights activist who was shot in the head by the Taliban, also appealed to people to exercise their franchise, saying “one vote can change” Pakistan's future.
While, former Prime Minister and PMl-N chief Nawaz Sharif cast his ballot and said he was confident of receiving “good news” about his victory. President Asif Ali Zardari cast his vote for Pakistan's general election through postal ballot, the presidential spokesman has said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party decided to boycott the general elections claiming massive rigging and mismanagement at several polling stations.