Imran Khan surprises all by putting up 767 candidates

The Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) has presented a total of 767 candidates for the directly contested national and provincial constituencies, 82 less than the total seats, for the May 11 general elections.

Considering that the Imran Khan team is vying for the grand electoral exercise for the first time after buoyed up by the October 2011 public meeting at Minar-e-Pakistan, the mere fact that it has put up such a huge number of contestants is no mean achievement.

PTI has almost matched, if not surpassed, the number of candidates unleashed by other formidable parties like the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which have not released any consolidated lists of their competitors for their own reasons.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), which is working at the usual slow bureaucratic pace, has not made available the names of the final candidates, which is not an uphill task after the finalization of the procedural rigmarole.

A close look at the PTI’s list of contenders reveals that save for a small fraction, all the contestants are new faces and fresh blood, who have no personal say in their respective constituencies. Whoever among them will win, will triumph only because of Imran Khan’s appeal, which will happen only if there is a groundswell of electoral support for him. This lot carries no personal vote, which matters much in Pakistan’s electoral scenario.

The PTI’s list discloses that Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) essentially attracted the attention of Imran Khan on the premise that he is much more popular in these provinces than Sindh and Balochistan. He hardly left a few seats in Punjab and KPK where he did not sponsor the candidates.

The PTI, which like the PML-N, is also contesting the elections single-handed without making alliance with any political party, proffered as many as 248 candidates for the National Assembly constituencies whereas there are a total of 272 seats up for grabs. This means that Imran Khan did not put forward his nominees in 24 national constituencies.

Similarly, the PTI presented a total of 519 cardholders for the provincial seats against 577 constituencies. Thus, there are no PTI contestants for 58 provincial seats. Imran Khan’s interest in Punjab is evident from the fact that the PTI fielded 142 representatives for the National Assembly constituencies against a total of 148 seats. He presented 294 contenders for 297 constituencies of the Punjab Assembly.

His belief that he will rout everyone in the KPK is clear from the number of his nominees that he has put up for the national and provincial seats from this province. He offered 34 candidates against 35 national constituencies and 98 against 99 provincial seats.

However, the PTI’s interest waned in Sindh where it presented as many as 47 competitors against a total of 61 national seats. Similarly, it put forward 99 candidates for 130 provincial seats.

For the 14 Balochistan seats in the National Assembly, the PTI offered only 11 contenders and, for the 51 provincial constituencies, it presented 28 nominees.It fielded its candidates for both national seats from Islamabad. Likewise, Imran Khan sponsored his contenders for all the 12 seats of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fatas) in view of his belief that he has a lot of influence in the tribal belt because of his policy against drones and the United States.

The PTI has not put forward its candidates for NA-23 Kohistan and KPK assembly seat PK-51 Haripur; NA-55 Rawalpindi (where it is supporting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed); NA-88 Jhang (where it believes Faisal Saleh Hayat will come to its side after his victory); NA-94 Toba Tek Singh; NA-183, NA-184 and NA-185, and Sindh’s NA-199, NA-200, NA-201, NA-202, NA-203, NA-206, NA-209, NA-210, NA-211, NA-214, NA-217, NA-218, NA-219, NA-227, NA-228, NA-229, NA-230 to NA-235, NA-242, NA-248, and NA-249.