GUJRAT: PML-Q’s former provincial minister Mian Imran Masood and ruling party MPA Saleem Sarwar Jaura plan to contest for the slot of Gujrat Metropolitan Corporation mayor.

Jaura has recently announced contesting the election after vacating his Punjab Assembly seat.

Sources close to him say he has already conveyed his intention/request to the Punjab chief minister at a meeting in Lahore where he was accompanied by three other PTI MPAs from Gujrat district.

On the other hand, the Q leadership has signalled Imran Masood to launch a mass contact campaign in the city to prepare for the upcoming local government elections.

A senior party leader told Dawn that Mr Masood is a party loyalist through thick and thin and now time has come that he could prove his potential to serve the people of Gujrat.

He said the Q was fully ready to pitch its own panels on all the seats of local bodies in Gujrat district.

A four-time MPA from Gujrat city (1990 to 2007), Mr Masood lost the 2008 and 2013 polls but did not contest the 2018 vote due to a seat adjustment agreement between the PML-Q and the PTI.

Though both the ruling coalition partners in the federal and Punjab governments have yet to decide the matter of contesting local elections in an alliance or separately, local chapters of both the parties have been doing the homework within their ranks and file on selection of candidates.

Sources in PTI say the party lawmakers from Gujrat have told the Punjab CM to get their due share in case of any alliance with the PML-Q in Gujrat, including that of mayor slot.

MPA Jaura told Dawn that the party leadership’s decision would be followed in case of launching candidates for the local bodies.

Imran Masood said that he had conveyed to the party leadership to launch his elder brother Mian Haroon Masood, a former Naib tehsil nazim of Gujrat, as party candidate for the Gujrat city mayor but party was yet to decide the matter.

“Whatever decision the party takes, I am in touch with the masses,” Masood said.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2022