December 4, 2002	Wednesday	Ramazan 28,1423

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BAHAWALPUR, Dec 3: The announcement of the byelection schedule for the 11 national assembly seats in the country has activated the political parties and their aspirants to contest the NA-187 (Bahawalpur five) seat.

The NA-187 has been declared as vacant because MNA-elect Aitzaz Ahsan has retained his Lahore seat.

There were five contestants belonging to all the main political parties in the October elections, but now the MMA will also field its candidate here. PPP’s Aitzaz Ahsan had defeated PML-N’s Khalid Mahmood Jajja by a margin of over 37,000 votes. The other rivals were Azhar Mehmood (PML-Q), Muhammad Ijazul Haq (PML-Z) and Shahid Irfan Malik (National Alliance).

After the announcement by the Election Commission, the political groups and individuals has started consultations with the highups of their respective parties to secure party tickets.

As of now, the prospective candidates are PML-Q’s Azhar Mehmood, Syed Tasneem Nawaz Gardezi and Safdar Abbasi.

The PPP is likely to field either former defence minister Mir Aftab Shaaban Mirani or former information minister Khalid Ahmed Kharal while PML-N will likely to retain its defeated candidate Khalid Mahmood Jajja. He is the son of former MNA Chaudhry Mumtaz Ahmed Jajja who could not contest the election due to the graduation condition.

Tariq Cheema, district Nazim and PPP leader, had said the party ticket would be announced by Ms Benazir Bhutto, but it seems that she will name the candidate on the recommendation of Mr Cheema.

Ijazul Haq’s PML-Z may not be interested here as there is little hope that he could get any potential candidate.

However, the MMA has been seriously lobbying for its candidate much before the announcement of the byelection schedule. Though the MMA has no potential candidate in Yazman, the deputy parliamentary leader in the Punjab assembly, Dr Syed Waseem Akhtar, might get the ticket.