LAHORE, March 16: Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf’s Punjab chapter intra-party elections on Saturday witnessed a neck and neck contest for president and general secretary seats. The counting of votes was going on till the filing of this report at 11.30pm.

Ejaz Chaudhry and Dr Yasmin Rashid were contesting for the party’s Punjab president and secretary general slots against Unity Group’s Ahsan Rasheed and Fraz Ahmad Chaudhry, respectively.

PTI Punjab election commission Shadab H Jafri, who was also presiding officer at the intra-party elections, told Dawn the contest was very close and the votes were being counted in a careful manner.

He said the election commission carefully conducted the exercise as earlier because of some problem in Lahore district vote count it had to organise re-polling. “It will take at least two more hours to complete the counting,” he said.

The PTI Punjab intra-party elections were held for 33 seats of party’s provincial body at Aiwan-i-Iqbal. Polling began at 9.30am and continued till 6pm in a peaceful manner. As many as 105 candidates were contesting for the 33 party seats. However, there was one-on-one fight for PTI Punjab president and secretary general slots.

The electoral college of the PTI Punjab elections comprised newly-elected senior vice-presidents and general secretaries from all districts. All Punjab towns’ elected presidents and general secretaries and the province’s’s four regions’ elected secretaries general.