KARACHI: Five candidates belonging to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) on Tuesday filed their nomination papers for a Senate seat that fell vacant after the resignation of Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar.

Senator Khokhar left the upper house of the parliament on the advice of Pakistan Peoples Party’s senior leadership earlier this month.

The ruling PPP has nominated senior leader Waqar Mehdi, the secretary general of the party’ Sindh chapter and currently serving as Special Assistant to Chief Minister, for the slot.

On Tuesday, Mr Mehdi and PPP leader Aajiz Dhamra filed their nomination papers at the offices of the Election Commission of Pakistan. The two were accompanied by senior party leaders and provincial ministers including former chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, Senator Nisar Khoro, Taj Haider, Nasir Hussain Shah, Mukesh Kumar Chawla, Saeed Ghani, Shahla Raza and others.

Also, three candidates of the MQM-P — Ahmed Saleem Siddiqui, Sabin Ghori and Advocate Tariq Mansoor — filed nomination papers.

The ECP has fixed December 8 for voting in the Sindh Assembly for the Senate election.

According to the schedule announced by the ECP, the scrutiny of the nomination papers will be held on Nov 25 and the last date for filing appeals against acceptance or rejection of the papers will be Nov 28.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2022