July 14, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-us-Sani 28, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 13: The Punjab leadership of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) met here on Friday to discuss the strategy for the next general election in the Rawalpindi district where the party had suffered a humiliating defeat in the 2002 polls, sources told Dawn.

The meeting was presided over by Chief Minister Ch Pervaiz Elahi, who is also the president of the party’s Punjab chapter, and it was attended by the provincial office-bearers, sitting MPs from the Rawalpindi district, including Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and Provincial Law Minister Basharat Raja, and the local government representatives.

The sources said the participants of the meeting agreed in principle that all the sitting members of the National and provincial assemblies would again be awarded tickets for the next election and applications would be invited only from the constituencies where the party had suffered defeat in the previous election.

However, the sources said, the party was facing a division on the issue of award of ticket to Federal Minister for Labour, Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis Ghulam Sarwar Khan from NA-53 constituency, comprising Taxila and other adjoining areas.

It may be recalled that the PML, which had contested the last election as the PML-Q, could not win even a single seat out of the seven National Assembly (NA) seats of the Rawalpindi district in 2002.

Later, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and Ghulam Sarwar Khan, who had contested the election as independent candidates, joined the PML in return for the cabinet positions. Sheikh Rashid Ahmed had initially won the two NA seats (NA-55 and NA-56). He retained the NA-55 seat and vacated NA-56 where he nominated his nephew in the by-election. However, Hanif Abbasi of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) defeated the Sheikh’s nominated candidate in the by-election.

Similarly, only two PML-Q candidates could make it to the Punjab Assembly out of 14 seats of the district when Mushtaq Kiyani and Raja Rashid Hafeez won the PP-5 and PP-11 seats. Later, Fiazul Hassan Chohan who had won the election on the MMA ticket from PP- 14, also joined the PML.

Talking to Dawn, Punjab Law Minister Mohammad Basharat Raja admitted that there were some differences within the party on the issue of award of ticket to Ghulam Sarwar Khan. He said another strong party leader Chaudhry Kamran was also aspiring for the party ticket from the same constituency.

He said otherwise there were no differences within the party in the district. He said it was up to Sheikh Rashid Ahmed to decide about the two urban seats of the district while the party was facing no difficulty in other rural constituencies like Gujjar Khan, Murree and Kahuta.

The law minister, who had himself faced a defeat in the 2002 provincial assembly election on PP-6 constituency, said that the party had suffered in the previous elections as there were “non- committal”, local government representatives in the district at that time. Mr Basharat, who later became the MPA by winning the by-election on a vacant seat from Gujrat, the hometown of the Chaudhry brothers, said the local representatives at that time did not use the official resources for the party purposes.

The law minister claimed in the last over four years, the PML government carried out historic development activities in the Rawalpindi district. He expressed the hope that on the basis of these development projects in the district, the party would achieve a big success in the next election. “Now the situation will be different. We have focussed on each and every constituency and tehsil and you will see the results,” he added. According to an official handout, Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi while speaking at the meeting said that the organisation process of the PML at every level was in the final stages and the party workers should prepare themselves for general election.

He said the scrutiny and removal of errors in voters’ list was very important and asked the workers to guide the people in this regard. He appointed Provincial Minister for Cooperatives Col (retd) Mohammad Anwar as coordinator in the Rawalpindi district to work for the removal of reservations at the district level.

The chief minister said that uplift projects worth Rs20 billion were nearing completion under the special package of the Punjab government. Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and Raja Basharat gave briefings on the ongoing development schemes in Rawalpindi.