BAHAWALPUR, Sept 26: Candidates of the same party in overlapping national and provincial assembly constituencies have no coordination among them and are running their campaigns individually and in a disorganized manner.

There is a general impression that candidates of the same party hesitate to contact the voters collectively. The reason for isolated contacts is that the candidates harbour grudges over allotment of party tickets. The problem is most severe in the ranks of MMA, PML-N and PPP.

The MMA candidate for NA-185, Haq Nawaz Qamar, has no coordination with the alliance candidates for the overlapping PP-271 and -272, Dr Syed Waseem Akhtar and Hafeez Qaisar. Mr Qamar’s main supporters are from JUP-Noorani while Dr Waseem is mainly backed by JI activists. MMA’s Syed Hafeez Qaisar seems to have been left alone by the party for unknown reasons.

The PML-N’s local chapter developed rifts when former MPA Samiullah Chaudhry fielded his veiled sister Gul-i-Rana. The party fielded former Bahawalpur Tehsil Naib Nazim Syed Abdul Mueed Shah Bokhari on PP-271 and Malik Iqbal on PP-272. These candidates have not attended a single public meeting together.

Former minister Farooq Azam Malik is a National Alliance (Millat Party) candidate for NA-185, which also includes the areas falling in PP-271, where Naveed Khalil is the Alliance candidate. The two candidates also lack an organized campaign.

However, it has been observed that there is coordination in the campaigns of the national and provincial assembly candidates of PML-QA and PPP in NA-185, PP-271 and -272.

The PML-QA has a solid candidate for NA-185 in the person of Syed Tabish Alwari, who has arranged his campaign in such a way that the party’s candidates for PP-271 and -272, Peerzada Afzal Nizami and Shaukat Arain, also get a chance to meet and speak to voters in their respective areas.

The PPP candidates in NA-185, 271 and 272, Sardar Mohammad Hussain, Syed Tatheerul Hassan and Chaudhry Zafar Iqbal, are all newcomers, but they hold joint meetings with voters of their constituencies. It may be recalled that so far PPP is the only political party which has arranged for its top leadership to speak at a public meeting here.