October 26, 2007	Friday	Shawwal 13, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 25: It appears that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is yet to find a safe National Assembly constituency for himself.

Pakistan Muslim League leaders applied for party tickets for the general elections on Wednesday and senior Leaguer Maqbool Sheikh submitted an application for the Kashmore seat said to have been preferred by the premier.

The prime minister, it may be mentioned, did not attend the formal launching of the PML election campaign on Wednesday when senior Leaguers applied for the party tickets.

Party sources said PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain had been advised by his political aides to contest from the safe Attock seat which was won by his niece in 2002 and later vacated for the prime minister. Mr Aziz has so far failed to get support of the Attock district nazim for the seat which had been vacated in 2004 by his daughter.

After losing hope for the Attock and Tharparkar constituencies, Mr Aziz visited Kashmore on Tuesday and met local government representatives and party members, giving an impression that he had selected the constituency for himself.

Reports that he might contest the elections from Kashmore appeared in Wednesday’s newspapers.

About the Tharparkar seat which the prime minister had also won in by-elections in 2004, Sindh Chief Minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim told his supporters recently that he would abide by the party high command’s decision.

Another setback for the prime minister was a statement of MNA Chaudhry Wajahat Hussain, brother of Chaudhry Shujaat, that the PML’s election campaign would be run by Chaudhry Shujaat and Punjab Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi because, as he implied, Mr Aziz was not in a position to handle it.

Maqbool Sheikh, younger brother of Imtiaz Sheikh who was a close confidant of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, is senior vice-president of the PML and he wields considerable following in rural Sindh.