LARKANA: The panel backed by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) swept the polls (2019-20) of the Arts Council of Pakistan Larkana by inflicting a defeat on the Shah Latif Panel the other day.

According to result, the Peoples Cultural Panel won all seats.

Assistant Commissioner (revenue) Tufail Ahmed Shaikh acting as election commissioner conducted the polls in the presence of caretaker president Suhail Ahmed Makani. From the total 820 registered voters only 587 were found eligible as 233 members failed to pay their membership fee till the last date given to submit the fee. Of 587, 543 votes were polled.

Aziz Sangi (323 votes), Mohammed Ismail Jatoi (315 votes), Abdul Nabi Sariyo (310), Nazeer Khuhawar (330) and Munawwar Ali Rind (304) were declared as winners for the slots of president, vice president, secretary, deputy secretary and treasurer respectively.

The runners-up belonging to the Shah Latif Panel were Engineer Javed Ahmed Shaikh (207 votes), Ghulam Sarwar Salim (202 votes), Jam Jamali (198 votes), Altaf Hussain Bhatti (177 votes) and Mushtaq Tunio (214 votes) who faced defeat on the same seats.

All nine positions for the chairmanship of different depart­ments — art and drama, literature, music, fine art, library, press and publi­city, publication, archives, documentary and photography — were secu­r­ed by Ashiq Dayo (307 vot­es), Shahmeer Soomro (292 votes), Saleem Raza Kum­bhar (342 votes), Afsar Qureshi

(269 votes), Panjal Khan Sangi (286 votes), Mohammed Haneef Suhag (358 votes), Rizwan Gul (338 votes), Asif Ali Siyal (290 votes) and Saleem Sanen Channa (319 votes).

The election commissioner in the result document said those were the interim results.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2019