Lahore:
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has chosen a cautious strategy in Lahore, which awarded his NA-129 ticket to last year’s runner-up, while taking a jump of faith in Wazirabad by filling Bilal Tarar brother to the federal Minister of Information Attaullah Tarar-a relative outsider to the end of a new batch of a new batch of the Federal Information Minister Attaullah Tarar.
The party has also announced its candidate for the PP-87 Mianwali.
Meanwhile, coalition partner PPP stays on the fence on whether to compete at all. Any decision will be subject to the result of the consultation with PML-N, according to the party’s secretary general.
On the other hand, although Pakistan Tehreek-E-Insaf (PTI) has officially declared a boycott, some are calling on the party’s imprisoned founder, Imran Khan, to rethink the decision.
In Lahores NA-129, the PML-N ticket has been handed over to Mian Muhammad Nouman, who ended in second place in the 2024 election.
A hot competition is expected as PTI’s Hamad Azhar, the son of the late MNA Mian Azhar, has entered the ring and will fight for this seat under the PTI banner as it does not fall within the constituencies that the party has chosen to give up.
The late Mian Azhar had caught the seat last year with over 103,000 votes and defeated Nouman by a margin of 32,000 votes, with Nouman securing just over 71,000.
Originally, PM’s chairman of the Youth Council Rana Mashhood is said to be in the ticket, but consultations at the last minute of the Sharif family and a meeting between Khawaja Saad Rafique and the Prime Minister brought the verdict to Nouman’s advantage.
In Mianwali’s PP-87, the PML-N ticket has gone to Ali Haider Noor Khan Niazi, who was also the nominated party in 2018. He had booted the eventually re-planned vote in protest and claim of rigging in the parliamentary elections.
By 2024, the ticket instead went to PTI Defector Inamullah Khan Niazi, a relative of Imran Khan who lost by a huge 95,000-vote margin to PTI’s Ahmad Khan Bachar.
Niazi, after his protest over being denied a party ticket in 2024, broke the rows to form his own panel and ran as an independent candidate from NA-90 (Mianwali), only to be threatened by a staggering margin of about 150,000 votes.
Despite becoming junk in 2024, however, Ali Noor subsequently retained cordial ties with PML-N Punjab President Rana Sanaullah Khan, who is believed to have played a crucial role in securing him this ticket.
In particular, Rana Sanaullah, who himself has lost her traditional fortress seat in Faisalabad to PTI, has now been compensated with a partyomination for a Senate seat from Punjab.
While PML-N reorganizes its strategy, PPP remains at sea. The party’s Secretary General Nayyar Hussain Bukhari said PPP would consult his allies, especially PML-N, before making a final decision.
The ultimate decision as to whether or not PPP will field its candidates would be made within the party, he said, adding that applications had been invited and that a verdict would soon come.
Speculation continues to swirl in Punjab that PPP may opt out of a wooden observer saying it could torpedo its already fragile efforts to intervene in the province, especially if PTI is absent from the field.
