SAHIWAL, Oct 13: Khizar Hayat Khagga of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz won the by-election for the PP-220 seat on Thursday.

Khizar got 39,989 votes to defeat Muzaffar Shah Khagga, joint candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid and Pakistan People’s Party. Muzaffar secured 21,230 votes and independent candidate Zafar Shah Khagga 2,917 votes.

This time 66,189 of the total 136,925 votes were cast – 16 per cent less than the votes cast in the 2008 general election. Polling started at 160 polling stations of the constituency at 8am and continued till 5pm.

Violence was reported at some polling stations. At the polling station No.14 in 64/4-R village, PML-N candidate’s father Walayat Shah Khagga slapped PML-Q supporter Kabir Khan. Khan paid Khagga back in the same coin, embarrassing the former MPA in front of the public.

In another incident, polling agents for the PML-N candidate beat up the presiding officer. At polling station No.104, the presiding officer was mistreated by PML-Q worker Shahid Nawaz. As a result, polling was stopped for 30 minutes.

Fight between polling agents and supporters of rival parties halted polling at five polling stations for 45 minutes.

Police did not allow independent observers to enter a polling station in the Noor Shah area. At one of the polling stations in 65/4-R village not even a single woman voter of the total 515 registered voters cast her vote.

Interestingly, 2008 electoral rolls were used in the by-election. —Correspondent