To Imran Khan’s PTI, the 2013 election in NA122 and NA154 (along with two others), symbolise how the said election across the country (and especially in the Punjab) was ‘stolen’ by PML-N.

In August this year the Punjab Election Commission had ordered re-polling in NA122 and NA154, declaring the election in these constituencies null and void after accepting Imran Khan’s petition challenging the 2013 election result.

Though the Commission did not entertain Khan’s allegations of the election being stolen through ‘massive rigging’, it did maintain that certain irregularities (mainly by the polling staff), did occur.

Nevertheless, Khan and his PTI received the verdict with much pomp and jubilation, claiming that it substantiated Khan’s rigging claims; whereas the PML-N criticised the ruling by inquiring how a contestant could be unseated if no evidence of rigging was found (by the Commission) against the contestant.

This was the main argument presented (in the Supreme Court) by the lawyers of one such contestant who had defeated a strong PTI candidate, Jehangir Tareen, in NA154 (in 2013).

Punjab’s two National Assembly seats are central to the on-going conflict between the PML-N and PTI

Consequently, on Sept 29 this year, the Supreme Court suspended the August decision of the election tribunal to de-seat the PML-N candidate.

This has left Lahore’s NA122 to become the main arena that can provide the important constituency’s verdict on PTI’s persistent claims of rigging by the PML-N and the latter’s insistence that it won the 2013 election fair and square.

The 2013 election resulted in the ouster of the ‘left-liberal’ coalition government of the PPP, the ANP and the MQM (who had triumphed in the 2008 election). In 2013, PML-N achieved a landslide victory in the centre and in the country’s largest province, the Punjab.

PTI, whose stature had risen rather dramatically in 2011, was expected to win big in 2013, but it only managed to bag 28 seats.

The debacle left PTI chief, Imran Khan, accusing PML-N along with the temporary caretaker administration in the Punjab, the Election Commission, a private TV channel and even the former Chief Justice of working together to guarantee a PML-N victory.

Interestingly, though Khan has continued to reiterate his claims, his party, the PTI, has lost the majority of the by-elections (especially against the PML-N) that have taken place after the main 2013 election.

Nevertheless, if PTI manages to win NA122 (from which Imran Khan himself had lost to PML-N’s Ayaz Sadiq in 2013), this one victory just might be enough to give Khan the kind of momentum he is seeking to dislodge the PML-N regime.

The contest is an interesting one also because it is between two centre-right parties. The PML-N today is considered to be more customary in nature. It has evolved from being an implosive rightist entity (in the 1990s) to becoming a well-oiled moderate centre-right electoral machine. PTI on the other hand has emerged to challenge PML-N’s long-held electoral hegemony in the populous Punjab province. It has done so as a more radical version of centre-right politics, mixing populist right-wing rhetoric with equally populist leftist symbolism and social-democratic allusions.

The Punjab today is considered to be one of the country’s most conservative provinces, especially after former military dictator, General Ziaul Haq (1977-88), began to change the ideological complexion of the province through economic policies designed to benefit Punjab’s urban and semi-urban business communities, trader classes, and large sections of the province’s bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois.

So, the recent parallel rise of PTI here is mainly due to the more radical and effusive form of conservatism that it is offering. Though it has not quite been able to dent the PML-N vote bank in the Punjab, it has certainly usurped the support that the left-liberal PPP once enjoyed in this province. The PPP too had fused leftist symbolism with right-wing populism in the Punjab.

The electoral history of NA122 may be an effective way to understand how Punjab’s electoral politics have evolved. The constituency is one of the 13 NA seats in Punjab’s capital city, Lahore. It was introduced during the 2002 election and was largely carved out from what used to be NA94 and NA95.

This area has a large lower-middle-class (petty-bourgeoisie) population, but also contains large sections populated by well-to-do middle-class Lahorites. It also has Imran Khan’s residence, making this his home constituency.

During the historic 1970 election (the first in the country based on adult franchise), much of what today constitutes NA122 was NW61/Lahore 4 and NW62/Lahore 5. The NW61 seat was won by PPP’s S. Mohammad Rashid who gained 68,721 votes. Rashid was a left-wing ideologue of the PPP. The NW62 seat was bagged by another PPP ideologue, Malik Miraj Khalid (89,660 votes).

In the 1977 election (whose results were annulled by the Zia dictatorship), much of the area came under NA85 which was won by the PPP’s, Mian Salahuddin, a popular patron of the arts, who bagged 50,807 votes.

During the 1988 election (the first after the demise of the Zia dictatorship), the area which today is NA122 became NA94 and NA95 (Lahore 3 and 4). The NA94 seat was won by the then chairperson of the PPP, Benazir Bhutto (53,425 votes), and NA95 was grabbed by the current chief of the PML-N, Mian Nawaz Sharif (49,318 votes).

In the controversial 1990 election, NA94 was won by Mian Umar Hayat (of the Nawaz-led Islami Jamhoori Intihad [IJI]), and NA95 by IJI’s Mian Nawaz Sharif.

In the 1993 election, NA94 was won by PML-N’s Abdul Waheed (52,308) who defeated PPP’s Salman Taseer (47,283). NA95 was won by PML-N’s Nawaz Sharif (57,959).

PML-N’s Tariq Aziz (the famous TV quiz show host), won NA94 during the 1997 election, and Nawaz Sharif once again won NA95. In his first ever election, PTI chief Imran Khan could only receive 5,365 votes (NA95).

During the 2002 election NA94 and 95 were combined to become NA122 (Lahore 5). In this election, the constituency was won by PML-N’s Ayaz Sadiq (37,531). Imran Khan received 18,638 votes.

In the 2008 election, Sadiq won the seat again with 79,506 votes. However, during the 2013 election, he faced a stiff challenge from Imran Khan. Ayaz bagged 93,362 votes whereas Khan received 84,417 votes.

Apart from the economic reasons mentioned earlier suggesting that (during and after the Zia era) these reasons began to initiate a shift in Lahore’s electoral politics from left to right, another reason for this alteration may also be the fact that a large section of the population in Lahore is not entirely native any more.

Ever since the 1980s many areas of the city have seen the erosion of the city’s homegrown population. It has been replaced by a large settler population that has migrated to Lahore from smaller cities around it.

Across the 1990s, these ‘new Lahorites’ were well facilitated by the PML-N and thus constitute the party’s main vote bank here. Indeed, portions of this population’s second generation may be overriding its parents’ preference for PML-N by being attracted to Khan’s PTI, but the bulk of PTI’s recent increase in its vote-bank in Lahore is coming from Lahore’s traditional PPP voters and, more so, from these voters’ children, now grown up.

A recent Gallup-Pakistan survey suggests that the majority of NA122’s constituents will most probably be voting for PML-N again in the scheduled by-election.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, October 4th, 2015

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