RAWALPINDI: The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has extended the deadline for the submission of applications for party tickets for the upcoming local government polls until the announcement of the election schedule.

Earlier, the ruling party decided on August 7, as the deadline but the date was extended to allow more applications. “The party received fewer applications than expected,” a senior party leader told Dawn.

He said that for the 46 union councils (UC) of the Rawalpindi Municipal Corporation (RMC), the PML-N had only received 100 applications. There will be 12 seats in each UC, including those of chairman and councillors and reserved seats for women, labour and minority candidates.

For 120 UCs in the district council, the party had received less than 500 applications so far.

“The party expected more than 1,000 applications for RMC but received only 100 which forced the local leaders to extend the application deadline until the announcement of the election schedule,” he said.

The party leader said the PML-N had decided that the application fee for chairman would be Rs10,000, vice chairman applicants would pay Rs5,000, UC councillors would pay Rs2,000 and applicants for reserved seats would need to pay Rs5,000 each.

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Party workers, he said, were unhappy with the heavy fees. The workers hoped the application process would be free and the small number of applications was perhaps reflective of the workers’ resentment towards the application fees.

“PML-N Punjab President Shahbaz Sharif directed the committees to finalise the tickets for local government polls and send him a final list of party candidates. But the lists could not be shared with Mr Sharif,” he said.

Another local leader, requesting anonymity, told Dawn that party workers believed that there was confusion regarding local government polls in the province because of which, workers had shown a lack of enthusiasm.

“In 2014, party workers applied for tickets and submitted applications, along with fees but the election was postponed one month before the scheduled date in January. The fees paid by the applicants went to waste,” he said.

The party leader said rather than seeking new applications, the party should finalise a list of candidates from the lists compiled in 2014.

However, PML-N leader and former MNA Malik Shakil Awan, who is the head of the NA-55 committee, told Dawn that the party formed the committees at the National Assembly level but applications were collected by the city and district chapters.

He said the PML-N City Chapter forwarded the applications to the relevant committees and the party received many more applications than expected.

“We extended the deadline to facilitate potential candidates,” he said.

However, he agreed that more people would apply for tickets once the Election Commission shared the date for the submission of candidatures.

“We did not announce the names of the candidates until the submission of party tickets with the election commission, according to our political strategy. The PML-N had more than three candidates for every seat in each union council of RMC and District Council,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2015

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