ISLAMABAD, Dec 26 The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has awarded party ticket to Shakil Awan, one of its workers, for National Assembly by-election in Rawalpindi.

The decision was announced by party chief Nawaz Sharif after a meeting of senior party leaders at the Punjab House here on Saturday.

The party, however, deferred the decision to award ticket for the National Assembly seat in Mansehra.

Shakil Awan, who has been associated with the party since his student life, is expected to face former federal minister and his former ally Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and PPP's Amir Fida Paracha in the by-election in NA-55 Rawalpindi-VI for which the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is yet to announce schedule.

Announcing the decision at a press conference, Nawaz Sharif said the party had decided to give the ticket to Shakil Awan who, he said, belonged to a lower middle class family. “Instead of giving ticket to any rich person or landlord, the party is giving its ticket to a worker,” Mr Sharif said.

The PML-N announced the candidate just five days ahead of the Supreme Court hearing of the petition filed by six-time winner from the same constituency and Awami Muslim League chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed challenging a high court decision of postponing the by-election.

A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain has already issued notices to the ECP and the Punjab and federal governments to appear before it on December 30.

The ECP had twice issued notifications for holding the by-election, but the Punjab government went to Lahore High Court (LHC) and said the ECP could not issue the notification without hearing its viewpoint. On November 26, the LHC dismissed three intra-court appeals against postponement of the by-elections in the Punjab.

The ECP had postponed the by-elections to be held in NA-55 and NA-123 (Lahore) on the request of the Punjab government which said they had received intelligence reports that terrorists were planning to launch suicide attacks during the election campaign and on the polling day.

There are a total of 334,269 registered voters in the constituency.

As many as 61 candidates, including Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Rawal Town Nazim Sheikh Rashid Shafiq, PPP's Amir Fida Paracha, Siddiqul Farooque and Shakil Awan of the PML-N and Ijaz Khan Jazi of Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) had submitted nomination papers before the postponement of the elections.

The seat was vacated by PML-N's Haji Pervaiz Khan in the aftermath of the examination scandal.

Though the seat belonged to the PML-N and it won the seat twice last year, the presence of Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and Amir Fida Paracha could create problems for Mr Awan, the new candidate of the N-League.