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Tuesday March 19, 2024

125 in the run for 48 Senate seats today

Farooq H Naek, Muhammad Ali Saif, Sassui Palejo and Nighat Mirza elected unopposed from Sindh

By our correspondents
March 05, 2015
ISLAMABAD: Polling for the Senate elections is being held on Thursday (today) with 125 candidates in the contest for 48 Senate seats.
Up to 1,078 members of the national and provincial assemblies will elect 48 senators out of 52 vacancies as four senators have already been elected unopposed from Sindh. Polling will start take place from 9:00am to 4:00pm. The National Assembly and all four provincial assemblies will serve as polling stations.
Up to 339 MNAs will elect two senators from Islamabad, where six candidates are in the contest. The Fata MNAs will elect four senators. Up to 371 members of the Punjab Assembly will elect 11 senators. For these 11 Senate seats, 16 candidates are in the contest. Up to 168 members of the Sindh Assembly will elect seven senators while eight candidates are in the contest. Up to 124 members of the KP Assembly will elect 12 senators while 27 candidates are in the contest.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has finalised all arrangements. Up to 4,000 ballot papers have been printed: white for general seats, pink for women’s seats, green for technocrats’ seats and mustard for minorities’ seats.
The ECP has disallowed MPs from keeping cell phones or any other electronic devices that can take pictures with them at the time of polling to ensure the secrecy of the ballot. In Sindh, two candidates each from the PPP and MQM have been elected unopposed for the four seats reserved for technocrats and women.
Political activity and business of trading votes remained high in Islamabad, Peshawar and Quetta a day ahead of the polls.
Horse trading is at the minimum in Sindh and Punjab where the system of political parties is strong. However, in KP and Balochistan candidates have reportedly offered up to Rs300 million to win a Senate seat while the offer has gone up to Rs500 million in Fata.
Mumtaz Alvi adds: The four candidates returned unopposed to the Senate from Sindh are: Farooq H Naek andMuhammad Ali Saif on seats of technocrats and Sassi Palejo and Nighat Mirza on women’s reserved seats.
Half of the members of the Senate are to retire on March 11 after completing their term.Chief Election Commissioner Justice (R) Sardar Muhammad Raza Khan, in a late night statement, cautioned that strict action would be taken against the lawmakers involved in horse trading according to the law if tangible and solid poof is provided.
According to parliamentary sources, PPP is expected to pocket about seven Senate seats, bringing its tally of seats to 26 while PML-N can also get 15 to 16 seats. Hence both parties will be in close contest to grab the seat of the Senate chairman, as the incumbent Chairman Syed Nayyar Hussain Bokhari will also bow out.
The election of the Senate chairman and deputy chairman, needless to say, will bring into focus the smaller parties, whose cooperation will play the crucial part in the electoral process. Ahmed Hassan adds: It would be first time that two members of the lower house – Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and Jamshed Dasti – announced boycott to protest what they alleged massive rigging. Their boycott will make little impact on overall results but their act would be written in the parliamentary history.
It is first time that rival parties PML-N and PTI converged on the principle that the financial corruption be stopped on all costs even if it involves legislation and prepared the ground for enacting Article 22 to the Constitution making sale purchase of votes impossible.
A disturbing peculiarity of these polls will be a technical knockout of five out of eleven MNAs from Fata who will have no or little role in electing four senators as six other MNAs have forged their separate group to vote for their own favourite candidates apparently under some hidden understanding.
Thus PML-N-backed MNA Shahabuddin Khan on Wednesday staged a token walk-out from the National Assembly in protest against what he said failure of the parliament in blocking the way of illegal financial manipulation.