KARACHI, May 12: Although the results are not as encouraging as it would have liked, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League has ended its 11-year-long dry run to make a feeble comeback in Sindh.

The results are still unclear in most parts of the province and there are places where candidates have accused their opponents of rigging and challenged their defeats in unofficial results, yet it emerged on Sunday that the PML-N had won at least a National Assembly and two provincial assembly seats in the provincial capital’s remote fringes.

The election commission’s officials have confirmed the results of PS-114 from where Irfanullah Marwat has been declared winner.

This time Mr Marwat had a PML-N ticket to contest against the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Abdul Rauf Siddiqui. In 2008, Mr Siddiqui had won a cliffhanger in the same constituency against Mr Marwat, then an independent candidate.

Mr Marwat had won it in 2002 against the MQM’s Syed Afsar Sagheer as a candidate of the now long-forgotten National Alliance.

The PML-N has won NA-258 and PS-129, traditionally PPP strongholds. Hakeem Baloch, who developed differences with the PPP over the distribution of party tickets and left it, won it again this time, now as a PML-N candidate. However, most analysts and area residents say it is not the PML-N but Mr Baloch who became the PPP’s ultimate nemesis.Haji Shafi Jamote, a respected personality in Sindh’s coastal areas, has won on PS-129, falling in NA-258 in Malir. Mr Jamote is the father-in-law of PPP candidate on NA-239 Abdul Qadir Patel, about whose fate in the election different reports are in circulation.

Reports suggest the PML-N’s another candidate on PS-89 is leading against the PPP’s Dilawar Shah.

The PML-N had fielded dozens of its candidates this time across Sindh on national and provincial assembly seats. The most eminent of them all was Sindh PML-N president and former chief minister Syed Ghous Ali Shah, who has lost on both the national and provincial assembly seats in Khairpur.

His encounter on PS-29 against former chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah was one of the most eagerly followed contests in Sindh, which he has reportedly lost by a big margin.

Reportedly, the PML-N’s Mr Shah has also lost to PPP’s Nawab Wassan on NA-215.

Mr Shah has challenged the results and accused the rivals of carrying out “unprecedented rigging”.

Likewise, reports from Dadu indicate the influential Jatois of the PML-N have lost to the PPP candidates on the district’s two national and four provincial assembly seats.

Liaquat Jatoi, a former chief minister, who was leading his family and aides against the PPP candidates, himself has reportedly lost to the PPP’s up-and-coming Imran Zafar Leghari on an NA seat and could not succeed in a provincial assembly encounter against the PPP’s Kauser Perveen Junejo.

Reports suggest Mr Jatoi’s brother, Sadaqat, and son Abdul Karim, have also lost on an NA seat and a PS seat. The PML-N’s two other candidates on Sindh Assembly seats have also reportedly lost.

Same fate has been reported from Badin’s Golarchi where the PPP’s Nawaz Chandio has defeated the PML-N’s Ismail Rahu. Mr Rahu’s colleagues in Tando Allahyar, Raheela Gul Magsi and Irfan Gul Magsi, have lost as well.However, results of the Ratodero contest are still vague from where the PML-N’s Amir Bakhsh Bhutto was contesting against the PPP’s Mohammad Ali Bhutto. Amir Bakhsh is a son of Mumtaz Bhutto, who shunned his nationalistic path to merge his Sindh National Front with the PML-N.

It is for the first time since 1997 that the PML-N has got electoral mandate in Sindh. The PML-N had its chief minister, Liaquat Jatoi, in 1997 with 15 seats in the provincial assembly to lead a coalition with the MQM.

The party had eight Sindh Assembly seats and 10 NA seats in 1993. Its improved performance on NA election was because of the MQM boycott of the general elections on the National Assembly, which gave its candidates more comfort to defeat the weaker opponents.

The party was part of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad in 1988 and 1990. The PPP’s wave allowed just a single IJI candidate from Nawabshah to win PS-20 in 1988, while three of its candidates won NA seats and six provincial assembly seats in the 1990 elections.

The party fielded 41 candidates under General Pervez Musharraf’s elections in 2002 and lost all. Its 38 candidates met the same fate in the 2008 elections.

NPP supports PML-N

The National Peoples Party’s spokesman, Zia Abbas, has said in a statement that party head Murtaza Jatoi had called on PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif and extended his support to Mr Sharif’s future federal government.