Karachi: The candidates of all major political candidates yesterday filed nomination papers as they vie for a provincial assembly seat left vacant after electoral authorities disqualified Irfanullah Marwat, a Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) candidate who won the seat in the 2013 general elections.
Marwat was disqualified from the PS-114 seat after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) established that he had rigged the polls in 2013. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the PML-N are all in the running for the constituency.
For key player, the MQM, the by-election comes at a time the party is going through a crucial political phase ahead of the 2018 general elections. The party will be represented by Kamran Tissuri in the by-election. Tissuri was flanked by Karachi mayor and fellow party member Waseem Akhtar as he filed his nomination papers.
Akhtar lashed out at the PPP for withholding provincial funds from civic agencies and accused the PPP government of ruining Sindh province. He accused the PPP of meddling in urban constituencies.
However, PPP candidate Senator Saeed Ghani expressed confidence that he would win the seat. Ghani said development work carried out by the ruling PPP government in the province had been part of an approved budget and had not been an election ploy.
He accused his opponents of using official funds to win voters in the constituency, a move he said was baseless, and he criticised the PTI and MQM for what he termed their misleading propaganda campaigns aimed at his party.
Chief minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, who was visiting Shikarpur district, said that while the PPP had faced strong political alliances in the past, it had always come out victorious. Shah said the party would once again prove its credentials in this by-election.
Touching upon other electoral issues, Shah said the remapping of constituencies had been the mandate of the ECP and added that the PPP had submitted its proposal to the commission with regards to a new delimitation exercise concerning constituencies.
