LAHORE: The ruling PML-N won all 11 Senate seats from Punjab, but with a visible dent in its ranks as 11 of its MPAs went against party line by voting for a PPP nominee.

PML-N’s Pervaiz Rashid bagged 44, Ghous Mohammad Niazi and Lt Gen retired Abdul Qayyum 43 each, Saleem Zia 42, Mushahidullah Khan, Nihal Hashmi and Chaudhry Tanveer clinched 41 each to reach the upper house from general seats quota for Punjab.

The PPP’s Nadeem Afzal Chan lost the race but got 30 votes — 11 of them from the N League. However, three of the ballots were rejected. The PPP itself has eight MPAs in the Punjab Assembly, while the PML-Q, with equal members and three independent MPAs, had also announced its support for Mr Chan.

11 of its MPAs go against party line

The PML-N’s Raja Zafarul Haq (157) and Prof Sajid Mir (149) won seats reserved for technocrats and Ayesha Farooq (146) and Najma Hameed (157) grabbed the seats reserved for women.

Embarrassed at the fissures among its ranks, the PML-N leadership has ordered an immediate inquiry into the matter to dig out the ‘dissenters’ who managed to dodge all ‘counter-arrangements’, e.g. showing the stamped ballot to the ‘monitors’ deputed in the polling station in the name of polling agents before putting it into the ballot box.

PPP representative and former opposition leader Raja Riaz claimed that even provincial minister Tahir Khalil Sandhu, chief polling agent of the PML-N and the first voter on Thursday, was made to pass through the same procedure.

Talking to Dawn, Raja Riaz claimed that he foiled three attempts by members of the ruling party to cast a blank paper and carry with them the original ballot outside the polling station to show it to the leadership.

He also took credit for blocking attempts to show the ballot by coming in between the voters and the ‘monitors’ and also crying foul outside the polling station.

Some timely changes in the groups of voters allotted to each of its nominees helped the PML-N avert further dents in its ranks.

An MPA from Chiniot reportedly refused to vote for a PML-N nominee when the latter refused to curse a certain minority when a meeting of both of them was arranged at the 90-The Mall, the CM’s secretariat. Then the MPA’s group was changed to save the vote from being wasted.

Similarly, an MPA from Dera Ghazi Khan declined to vote for a certain candidate. His group too was changed.

Three MPAs — Zahoor Anwer, Shamoon Badshah Qaisrani and Shaukat Bhatti — did not cast their vote.

It was a lacklustre day in the Punjab Assembly building, missing the usual election mood as no major leader, except Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, turned up to boost the morale of their supporters.

Shahbaz Sharif too had come to cast his vote. He, however, held a couple of meetings with the party nominees and MPAs during his two-hour stay in his chamber.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2015

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