The Interior Ministry on Friday approved the deployment of the Pakistan Army and the civil armed forces to ensure peace during the by-elections scheduled for Nov. 23 (Sunday).
In a notification, the ministry said it was approving the deployment at the request of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). It said civil armed forces would be deployed as second-tier responders, with the status of standby/quick reaction force mode only. The Pakistan Army would be deployed as the “third-tier responders (in-situ Quick Reaction Force Mode).”
The Interior Ministry’s notification further said the deployment of armed forces aimed to support the ECP in ensuring the “peaceful conduct of by-elections to be held on Nov. 23, 2025.” It said the troops were “empowered by Federal Government to exercise the powers under Section 4 and 5 of Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 for the duration of employment.”
The notification follows the ECP requesting greater security for by-polls—six for the National Assembly and seven for the Punjab Assembly—after Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi appeared to threaten polling staff during a political gathering.
In letters to the secretaries of defense and interior on Thursday, the ECP said Afridi had “threatened” district administration, police officers, and ECP officials ahead of by-polls for Haripur, which may hamper the effective performance of their duties.
In his defense, the KP chief minister has claimed his remarks were “taken out of context.”
In a separate notification, the ECP said that, in exercise of its power under Article 220 of the Constitution, it had requisitioned the services of the Army and civil armed forces for the by-polls. “The forces so deployed are empowered to exercise powers under Section 4 and 5 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, for the duration of their deployment … in aid of civil power subject to law enforced in Pakistan,” it said.