The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) on Thursday added another electoral feather to its cap by sweeping the by-election in PP-196 Multan constituency.
Trouncing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate Rana Abdul Jabbar by over 10,000 votes, PML-N’s Rana Mehmoodul Hassan nailed the Punjab Assembly seat by shovelling in 29,372 votes. On the other hand, PTI’s Rana Abdul Jabbar could not go beyond 18, 920 votes followed by Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP) Muhammad Hussain with 7,177 votes.
The PP-196 seat was lying vacant since the disqualification of PML-N’s former provincial minister for prisons Chaudhry Abdul Waheed Arain, who had won this seat in the 2013 general elections.
However, Election Commission of Pakistan de-notified his membership following his disqualification by an election tribunal for holding two Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs), which is illegal in Pakistan.
A total of 14 candidates were vying for the seat. A breakup shows four of them were fielded by the political parties while the rest were independent candidates.
ECP Multan had set up 133 polling stations in the constituency, out of which 41 were declared ‘sensitive’. There are 176,315 registered voters in PP-196 including 96,121 male and 80,194 female voters.