Observer Report Lahore
Pakistan Muslim League-N’s (PML-N) Azam Nazir Tarar and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Barrister Ali Zafar have won the technocrat seats unopposed in the Senate.
It may be recalled that nomination papers of 15 candidates for 11 seats from Punjab have been accepted so far for the Senate elections.
Among them, nomination papers of 5 candidates of PML-N, 8 candidates of PTI, one candidate of PPP and 1 candidate of PML-Q have been accepted.
Manwhile, in Karachi, the election commission on Thursday approved the nomination papers of all candidates of Pakistan People’s Party from Sindh for the Senate election.
The election commission will conduct scrutiny of the nomination papers of further 22 candidates submitted for 11 Senate seats for general as well as the seats for technocrats and women categories.
The commission has summoned PTI’s Faisal Vawda, GDA’s Pir Sadruddin Shah Rashdi, MQM’s Amir Khan and other senate candidates.
The PPP has issued tickets to Taj Haider, Shahadat Awan, Jam Mehtab Hussain Dahar, Salim Mandviwalla and Sherry Rehman, for Sindh’s general seats. For the technocrat seats, tickets were given to Farooq Naek, Shahadat Awan, Karim Ahmed Khawaja, while for the women’s seat, Palwasha Khan, Khairunisa Mughal and Rukhsana Shah have been nominated by the party.
A total of forty-eight senators will be elected this time including 12 each from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, eleven each from Sindh and Punjab and two from Islamabad.
The Election Commission of Pakistan on Thursday rejected the nomination papers of PML-N leader and former information minister, Pervaiz Rasheed, for a Senate seat from Punjab.
A day earlier, Rasheed was told that he was a defaulter of the Punjab House in Islamabad and his nomination would be accepted only after he cleared the dues.
On Thursday, the retuning officer accepted the objection to Pervaiz Rasheed’s nomination and said that he failed to provide evidence regarding having cleared the dues.
Speaking to the media in Lahore, the PML-N leader termed the development an “engineered attempt” to keep him from contesting Senate polls.
“A so-called demand was created about which I was not informed. When I tried to fulfill this demand by paying the outstanding amount and exercising my right to participate in the polls, all government officials disappeared from their seats and offices.
“They are not giving their bank account number nor are they taking cash,” he said, adding that the ruling-PTI was inventing “fake” cases to incarcerate opposition leaders. He claimed govt officials were not ready
to accept the payment as they had been given directives by Prime Minister Imran Khan so that he could be stopped from contesting the polls on “technical grounds”. The ECP accepted the nomination papers of former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani for the upcoming elections.
