LAHORE, March 2: To the embarrassment of the Pakistan People’s Party, an independent candidate backed by the Pakistan Muslim League-N wrested one of its two certain seats in the Senate elections from Punjab quite unexpectedly.

It was a defeat everyone, including the PML-N, is mourning.

Eight aspirants were in the run for seven general seats of the Senate from the province — Zulfiqar Khosa, Zafar Dhandala, Rafiq Rijwana and M. Hamza (PML-N), Babar Awan and Aslam Gill (PPP), Kamil Ali Agha (PML-Q) and Mohsin Leghari, who was a PML-Q MPA but contested as an independent candidate.

Nominees of both the PML-N and PPP had enough votes to easily sail through to the Senate since each one was required to bag a minimum of 47 ballots as first priority. The PML-N and its allies — PML-F, MMA and independents — had 180 members in the Punjab Assembly. The PPP had 108 MPAs but two of them, Dr Asad Moazzam and Rana Babar, were abroad.

In this scenario a close contest was being expected between Kamil Agha and Mohsin Leghari because the former had the support of 36 PML-Q MPAs and the latter 20-plus members of the Unification Bloc, a splinter group of the PML-Q.

But against all expectations, Mr Leghari won and the loser was not Mr Agha or Mr Awan but the poor Aslam Gill, a long-time worker of the PPP.

Mr Gill was leading in the first priority count with a tally of 42 votes, but lost in the second priority count as in Mr Leghari’s words “every member of the Punjab Assembly assured me that his/her second priority vote would be for me”.

The contest was actually a test for strategists of the PML-N and of the PPP-PML-Q alliance.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah told Dawn that his party did not take any risk and divided all PML-N and 20 MPAs of the Unification Bloc into four groups, asking them to vote for the party’s four nominees as first priority and for Mr Leghari as second priority. The rest of the 40-plus MPAs of Unification Bloc were to vote for Mr Leghari as their first priority.

“We had set a strategy in which Mr Leghari was to grab at least 10 votes from the PPP-PML-Q pool to make it to the victory stand with the PML-N help,” the minister said.

The PPP’s strategists made a mistake. They divided the party’s 106 MPAs (two of them are abroad against party instructions) into two groups of 48 each and the rest were to vote for Mr Agha, the Q-League nominee. Six of the 48 MPAs allotted to Mr Gill violated the party discipline and voted for Mr Leghari.

AWAN IN THE FIRING LINE: A virtually weeping woman MPA of the PPP blamed Babar Awan, the only PPP nominee who made it to the Senate, for the debacle. She alleged that the former law minister had chosen “safe votes” for his pool and allotted the suspect voters to Mr Gill.

Angry PPP workers held a demonstration against Mr Awan on The Mall and tore up his portraits.

Although the PML-N-backed nominee won, the party was not that happy as it should have been since it had formulated a PML-Q-specific strategy to what its senior leaders say ‘prick’ Chaudhry Shujaat and Pervaiz Elahi.

In a mood of ‘dampened happiness’, Rana Sanaullah said the PPP had sacrificed one of its workers at the altar of “Lota League”, a jibe at the PML-Q.

PML-Q chief Chaudhry Shujaat Husain, who monitored the electoral exercise in a committee room at the Punjab Assembly, told reporters that it was a controversial win for Mr Leghari and could be challenged in courts.

He said it was a contest between ‘undemocratic’ forces (PML-N) and them (PPP and PML-Q).

Mr Leghari said he was not going to join the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf. “I do not believe in changing parties.”

Interestingly, the PML-Q has not taken any disciplinary action against Mr Leghari for violating the party discipline. It said the matter would be taken up at a later stage.

Had Mr Leghari not defected, the Q-League would have got two seats, a source said.