PESHAWAR: Taimoor Saleem Jhagra scored one of the highest margins of victory in the election for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly when he defeated his nearest rival Maulana Amanullah Haqqani by more than 11,000 votes.Taimoor Saleem Jhagra as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate in the PK-73 constituency polled 15,449 votes. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) candidate Maulana Amanullah Haqqani got 3,796 votes only. He lost by a margin of 11,653 votes.
Maulana Amanullah Haqqani was elected MPA from this constituency in 2002 and later became a provincial minister. The third position went to an independent candidate Mohammad Siddiq who got 1,512 votes. Another independent contestant, Khalid Mehmood, secured 1,242 votes.
Awami National Party (ANP)’s Mohammad Saleem Akhtar Durrani, managed 1,138 votes while Farhad Ali of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) received 1,002 votes. Qaumi Watan Party (QWP)’s Falk Niaz Khalil got 621 votes only.
Khalid Masood, a retired bureaucrat who remained provincial general secretary of the PTI in the past, contested as an independent candidate after being denied the party ticket. He polled a paltry 384 votes.
So complete was the defeat suffered by all the 11 losing candidates that they would have to forfeit their deposit.
MANSEHRA: The Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) has started lobbying to recapture the office of the tehsil naib nazim that had fallen vacant since its former naib nazim Qazi Zahidullah stepped down to contest the July 25 general election.
Qazi Zahidullah lost the election and is now lobbying to recapture office of the tehsil naib nazim Oghi. According to party sources, Syed Sajjad Hussain Shah, the district head of JI, has tasked Zahidullah to approach his colleagues in Tehsil Council Oghi as the party would announce his candidature for office of naib nazim once the Election Commission issued schedule for the by-election.