Former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has not participated in the race for the National Assembly constituency NA-63 Rawalpindi, for which a by-election would be held on October 14, along with other vacant federal and provincial seats.
According to reports in the local media, Nisar has neither filed his nomination papers nor sponsored any candidate or offered support to anyone. The former member of the NA has been in London for a while now and was seen attending Begum Kulsoom Nawaz’s funeral prayers at the London central mosque last week.
In the July 25 general elections, Nisar had contested two national and provincial constituencies each in Rawalpindi district as an independent, following his departure from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). He only won one Punjab Assembly seat and has preferred not to take oath as a provincial lawmaker although, under the law, there is no time restriction for doing so.
His nemesis, Ghulam Sarwar Khan, now the petroleum minister, defeated him in the two national seats, NA-59 (Chakri) and NA-63 (Taxila). However, he has vacated NA-63, where he has been strong historically and retained NA-59, where the former interior minister used to hold an edge.
