Pakistan Peoples’ Party records surprise victory in key Karachi by-election

Karachi: The Pakistan Peoples’ Party has surprisingly won the recently held key by-election in the National Assembly’s constituency of Karachi.

The PPP’s candidate Qadir Khan Mandokhail won the constituency NA-249 in District West of Karachi by securing 15,656 votes defeating the favourite candidate of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Dr Miftah Ismail, who bagged 14,747 votes. Dr Ismail earlier served as Federal Finance minister in the previous regime of PML (N).

The constituency earlier became vacant as former Federal Minister for Water Resources, Faisal Vawda, resigned as being a member of the National Assembly to become a Senator. Vawda belongs to the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. Vawda clinched this seat in 2018 general election after defeating candidate of PML(N), Shahbaz Sharif, who is now Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly, with a razor-thin margin of just 718 votes.

Not satisfied

The by-election was held on April 29 but the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) later withheld formal notification of the result and ordered recounting of the votes. The recounting of votes took place at the request of PML(N)’s candidate who was not satisfied with the preliminary by-poll result. The initial result of the by-poll showed that Dr Ismail lost electoral contest to the PPP’s candidate with a margin of just 683 votes while 731 votes in the by-poll were not counted as not being validly cast. The PML (N)’s candidate was compelled to file the application with the ECP for recounting of votes as compilation of the poll result got unduly delayed on the night of April 29. The lead of the PPP’s candidate, however, increased to over 900 votes after the vote recounting.

After formal declaration of the by-poll result, PPP Chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, took to twitter and expressed gratitude to people of Karachi for reposing trust in his party.