Uzbekistan’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has announced that Central Asia’s populous nation will hold a presidential election on October 24 this year.

The election campaign has started on July 23. Currently, almost 21 million people are included in the single electronic voter list.

Four officially registered political parties have a right to nominate their candidates for the presidency.

The resource-rich Central Asian nation of 34 million had been led by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev who took over in late 2016 following the death of veteran leader Islam Karimov, who had run Uzbekistan with an iron fist for 27 years.