KABUL - Noor Muhammad Noor, the Spokesman of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), on Tuesday said that the Commission has prepared a list of seven individuals to fill the seats recently vacated by politicians who registered for the spring elections.

The nomination filing process, which ended on Sunday after 22 days, saw a number of resignations by Cabinet ministers and MPs who were obligated by law to leave their posts in order to be eligible to run in the April elections. While the IEC has finalized its list of replacement MPs, the list of individuals to fill the vacant Ministerial positions has reportedly not yet been prepared.

"We have finalized the list of seven people to be introduced in the Lower House. We expect the seven people will be introduced either on Wednesday or Thursday," said Mr. Noor. The list of replacements is based on the provincial elections results that saw the resigned MPs put in office; the candidates who received the second highest number of votes are those that the IEC puts forward to fill the vacancies.

Meanwhile, IEC officials have also said that there is a high chance the elections will run into a second round due to the large number of nominations filed.

"The Election Commission is fully prepared to hold the second round of elections, if required," said Mr. Noor.

The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has started vetting the documents of the 27 tickets who filed for candidature in the Presidential race. The names of the 27 candidates will soon be dispatched to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) to verify the candidates' citizenship statuses. After the completion of all the evaluation process, a final list of eligible candidates will announced on October 19 by the IEC.

The IEC added that there is a chance that some candidates might step down at a later stage in the election process, which has happened before. November 11 is the deadline for eligible candidates to decide on whether to contest the polls or step down. (Tolo News)