Polls have opened in Pakistan after an election campaign sullied by militant violence and widespread allegations of military interference that could see the former international cricketer Imran Khan gather enough support to lead his first government.

Fears of fresh violence preceded the vote and hours after polls opened hospital officials said at least 28 people had been killed in an explosion outside a ballot station in Quetta. A shooting between supporters of two opposing parties earlier left one dead and two wounded in a village near the northwestern city of Sawabi.

The national vote is a two-horse race between the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), a long-established party that has ruled the country for the past five years, and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), formed by Khan to break open the nation’s hidebound politics.



About 106 million registered voters can put their stamp on what will be only the second transfer of power from one civilian government to another in the country’s coup-studded 71-year history.



Most analysts predict a hung parliament as the latest poll of polls by Gallup Pakistan shows the PTI marginally in the lead nationwide, but lagging in the crucial province of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest.

The campaign has been hit by claims from human rights groups, political leaders from several parties and media organisations of pre-poll rigging by the army. The PML-N claims the military is favouring the PTI because the former PML-N prime minister Nawaz Sharif tried to curb the military’s power before he was ousted in a supreme court ruling last July.

Militant attacks also struck at the campaign. The most catastrophic, in Mastung in the eastern province of Balochistan, killed 151 people while on Sunday the PTI’s Ikramullah Gandapur became the fourth candidate to die when he was killed in a suicide attack.



Whoever forms the next government will have to deal with Pakistan’s deteriorating economy. The rupee has slid in value over the past few months as the country teeters on the edge of a current-account crisis that will likely require it to seek a bailout from the IMF. The terms of any loan, which usually necessitate austerity measures, would cramp spending on the schools, hospitals and clean water that many of Pakistan’s disaffected 210 million-strong population lack.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Shehbaz Sharif (seated on left), brother of former PM Nawaz Sharif, campaigning in the run-up to the general election in Pakistan. Photograph: KM Chaudary/AP

Sharif, who returned to Pakistan on 13 July to face a 10-year prison sentence for corruption, remains central to the election with the PML-N calling on voters to come out en masse to force the army to respect their democratic will.



Nearly 400,000 soldiers are to be stationed inside and outside the country’s 89,500 polling stations, a startling rise on 2013 when only a fifth of that number were deployed despite a far graver security situation.



The leaders of all political parties suspended campaigning at midnight on Monday to comply with election rules. Both Khan and Shehbaz Sharif, the brother of Nawaz who has assumed the position of PML-N chairman, finished by hammering home their key campaign messages in Punjab, which returns 141 of the 272 seats in the national assembly.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (centre), the leader of the Pakistan Peoples party, shakes hands with supporters during a rally in Karachi. Photograph: Fareed Khan/AP

Khan hurried between five rallies in Lahore, the capital of the province. He attacked the Sharif family and blamed the poor state of public services on their corruption. “Where did your money go if it was not spent on you? It went to London,” he said.



Sharif argued that the PML-N has delivered for Pakistan, fixing the energy shortages that previously led to day-long blackouts. He also sought to generate sympathy for his brother, saying he has a “dirty washroom” and is being denied urgent medical attention.



Khan’s chances of making the necessary inroads in Punjab – where the PTI currently only holds a handful of seats – have grown after his recruitment of “electable” politicians. These long-in-the-tooth, fickle politicians bring with them vote banks but also criticism that the PTI has lost sight of its anti-corruption agenda. Several have joined because of Khan’s public defence of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws, which mandate the death penalty.



Pakistan’s historically liberal party, the Pakistan Peoples party (PPP), has faded to strongholds in the province of Sindh, but its 29-year-old leader, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, fought a widely praised, principled campaign that has invigorated supporters. With a coalition government on the cards, the PPP may well emerge as kingmaker.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supporters of Tehreek-e-Labbaik, which promotes the death of blasphemers, ride with election posters displaying the party head, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, in Karachi. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

Fears are meanwhile rising that far-right Islamist parties could make historic gains after they drew unprecedented large crowds at their closing rallies. Tehreek-e-Labbaik, a new party founded solely to promote the death of blasphemers, is fielding almost as many candidates in Punjab as the established political outfits.



The chief election commissioner on Tuesday said the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), an independent state body, “is trying its best to hold free, fair and unbiased elections” but doubts have been raised after it granted military officials the highest power inside the stations. An EU election observer mission announced earlier this month its work had been seriously obstructed by unexplained visa delays and the foreign correspondent Christina Lamb had her visa denied, blaming the army in an article for the Sunday Times.

