KARACHI/HYDERABAD, Feb 10: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the ruling faction of the Pakistan Muslim League won by-elections in Karachi and Jamshoro respectively on Saturday. Sporadic incidents of violence and allegations of malpractice followed the polling in both constituencies.
The MQM’s Syed Akhlaque Hussain Abidi looked set to overwhelm his rival, PPP’s Nafees Siddiqui, in the by-election to Karachi’s NA-250. The seat had fallen vacant with the death of MMA’s Abdus Sattar Afghani, a former city mayor.
According to preliminary results, Mr Abidi had bagged 53,910 votes while Mr Nafees Siddiqui was trailing at 9,976. Although the Muttahida Majlis-Amal had decided to boycott the elections, 196 votes were cast for its candidate, Raja Arif Sultan.
The returning officer, Additional District Sessions Judge Ghulam Mustafa Memon, announced the unofficial result at 12.25am. The official result will be notified by the Election Commission from Islamabad. There are 214,234 voters in the constituency. The number of polling stations was 135. Although the turnout in the early hours was thin, polling gained momentum in the closing hours. The turnout was no more than 15 per cent, according to members of the monitoring team and the media who visited a number of polling stations.
There were four incidents of violence during the polling. The biggest incident was at Pakistan Chowk in which the PPP candidate, Nafees Siddiqui, was manhandled by unidentified men. In the other incidents, two MQM supporters suffered gunshot wounds while a union council nazim was manhandled at a polling station.
JAMSHORO: The ruling PML's candidate, Pir Mujeeb Shah Jillani, was in sight of a convincing victory in the by-election to a Sindh Assembly seat in Jamshoro.
According to unofficial results consolidated by the returning officer, Mujeeb Shah had obtained 21,781 votes while his rival, Dr Sikandar Shoro of the PPP-P, had secured a mere 11,540 votes. The seat fell vacant with the death of People’s Party Parliamentarians Ghulam Nabi alias Piri Shoro.
The turnout was around 30 per cent.
One man died of cardiac arrest following an incident of aerial firing at Budhapur, Manjhand taluka. The area is believed to be a stronghold of PPP-P’s Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah.
Syed Qaim Ali Shah, the PPP’s Sindh chief, described the by-elections as a fraud and a case of historic rigging.
He said it was a `test case’ for the government in the run-up to the general election. “Today’s happenings have shattered the People’s Party’s confidence.”
He alleged that PPP supporters had been beaten by Sindh ministers, who also stamped ballots and countersigned them.
Police lodged a criminal case against Dr. Sikandar Shoro on a complaint by Jalalur Rehman Rind, a Nazim.
