LAHORE, Sept 16: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) high command will meet here for two days, coming Wednesday and Thursday, to focus on the constituencies (in six divisions of Punjab) where the party had lost in the 2008 general election.

The party has already discussed three south Punjab divisions -- Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan and Sahiwal -- in the elders’ meeting on Saturday (Sept 15).

Deputy secretary-general Ahsan Iqbal says the series of meetings is a kind of deliberations on ‘pre-feasibility’ studies of the divisions to see “where the party stands in these areas and what options the party is left with to secure the seats it had lost in the previous polls”.

Party president Nawaz Sharif had formed these divisional study groups or committees before leaving for Umra this Ramazan.

Ahsan says similar exercises are being planned for Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as office-bearers of the provincial chapters have been invited to these meetings so they can see for themselves how the divisional committees have worked in Punjab and how they can at least replicate if not improve the studies in their respective provinces.

An official says members of these committees (all PML-N MNAs) have been selected from outside their respective divisions to make the assessment as objective and genuine as possible.

Confirming the report, Ahsan says the committee members have consulted party workers as well as office-bearers at the district level before framing their recommendations.The recommendations, he however says, are not final as a decision about award of tickets will be taken only by the parliamentary boards.

In response to a query, he says the constituencies the party or the Unification Bloc -- a PML-Q splinter group that is supporting the Q League minority in Punjab to keep it in power after it divorced the PPP -- had won in the previous polls are excluded from the study as the party does not need it.

Answering a question about accommodating the influential who are likely to join the party before the polls, he says no such question arises for the seats where the PML-N nominees lost but with a close margin. “Such people will be accepted, with much care, only where we have a weak candidate.”

When asked to confirm the reports about accepting Riaz Pirzada, Begum Abida Husain, etc., into the party folds, he claimed that almost half of the PPP parliamentarians were in contact with the party seeking meeting with Mr Sharif, for they’re finding it hard to face their electorate on the question of power loadshedding and price-hike.

He hints that local seat adjustments like they had made in the 1997 polls are possible in the next general election but there is little chance of entering into electoral alliances.