The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Monday won the by-elections in Faisalabad’s PP-72 constituency, while the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz bagged Dera Ghazi Khan’s PP-240 seat.
According to unofficial results, PTI candidate Sheikh Khurram Shahzad received a total of 23,973 votes defeating Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Khwaja Liaquat, who could only get 17,626 votes. The victory will earn the winning party an additional seat in the Punjab Assembly. The by-election results come as a surprise since Faisalabad is considered a stronghold of the PML-N. The seat fell vacant when PML-N candidate Khwaja Muhammad Islam’s degree was declared fake by the Higher Education Commission. Islam had won the seat in the May 11 elections.
PML-N BAGS PP-240: PML-N’s candidate Shamoona Ambreen Qaisrani won the provincial assembly seat PP-240 in the Dera Ghazi Khan by-poll.
According to unofficial results, Qaisrani secured 47,467 votes while her rival independent candidate Khawaja Dawood Sulemani bagged 19,569 votes.
PP-240 is a Qaisrani Baloch tribe-dominated constituency located on the boundary of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
Chief of the tribe, Mir Badshah Qaisrani, had been the traditional and unbeatable contestant from the seat. Qaisrani had been with the PML-N as an MPA most of his political career. However, after developing differences with the party high-ups, he joined the JUI-F and won the seat in the May 11 general elections, but was later disqualified in a fake degree case.