KARACHI, Feb 24: The ruling alliance once again proved its supremacy over the opposition by getting elected all of its 14 candidates in the elections for the Sindh seats of Senate on Monday. Polling was held in the Sindh Assembly building in an orderly manner.

The joint opposition also did well claiming all six general seats it had contested beside one each reserved for women and ulema/technocrat. However, it suffered a serious set back. Maleeha Malik, a direct nominee of the PPP chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, failed to win a seat by a fraction of votes in the second count. She polled only 27 votes.

The strategist, Naheed Khan, and other senior leaders of the party, who remained present in the opposition’s chamber through out the polling process, miserably failed to prevent defection from the party ranks. Similarly, they failed to explain effectively to the party members that the votes cast in excess to the required number would be at the cost of the other party candidate.

According to insiders, PPP’s five votes were defected while Rukhsana Zuberi who secured 38 votes in excess to the required 34 votes were proved detrimental to the seat of Maleeha Malik.

Similarly, Nafees Siddiqui, who was also a nominee of Benazir Bhutto and the PPP Parliamentarians President, Makhdoom Amin Faheem, could gather only 25 votes while the other candidate, Farooq Naik, polled 37 votes as against the required 34 votes.

Out of the 14 ruling coalition candidates, elected to the Senate, the PML-Q nominees were Mohammedmian Soomro, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Amin Dadabhai, Yasmeen Shah, Nisar Ahmad Memon and Begum Tanveer Khalid whereas the MQM’s nominees were Babar Ghauri, Ahmad Ali, Maulana Abbas Komaili, Prof Saeed Siddiqui, Abida Saif and Nighat Mirza. The National Alliance had fielded Asif Jatoi and the PML-F Justice (r) Abdul Razzaq Thahim.

The remaining eight elected candidates are Allama Shah Ahmad Noorani (the only MMA candidate) and PPP candidates Dr Safdar Abbasi, Mian Raza Rabbani, Dr Abdullah Riar, Anwar Baig, Abdul Latif Ansari, Farooq Naik and Rukhsana Zuberi.

The counting of votes took almost one hour whereas in second counting of votes on women’s seats, there was a tie between Nighat Mirza and Maleeha Malik who secured 33 and 27 votes respectively. However, the Returning Officer, Mr Halepota and his team members, Iqbal Saifur Rehman and Attaur Rehman, with the help of rules succeeded in convincing Farooq Naik and Naveed Qamar that despite a second count, Maleeha Malik failed to secure the required number of votes.

One of the voters made a serious mistake. He tick-marked the names of all his favourite candidates instead of writing down numbers in an order to show his first second and third preferences. Resultantly, one of the valid ballot papers for all the three categories was declared invalid.

Earlier, polling started at 10am with the MQM’s Aziz Fatima casting the first vote. Sultan Khawar was the last of the 168 members of the provincial assembly to exercise his right to franchise exactly at 4pm. The turnout was 100 per cent.

The Election Commission had made meticulous arrangements to ensure secrecy of the ballot.

The Chief Minister, Ali Muhammad Mahar turned up at around 1.30pm and appeared voter No. 110.

He got confused while marking on a pink ballot which was for women’s seats. The ballot paper had to be replaced with another one.

Deewan Yusuf Farooqui, an independent candidate, looked satisfied till the vote count started expecting more than 14 votes. However, he left the counting hall when after ending up at seven votes.