LAHORE: Barring any court orders, it seems the season of by-elections is upon us again. Since March 2022, the country has seen an unprecedented 66 by-elections, including 23 after the general elections of 2024.
A few of the other 43 were held due to natural causes, while the remaining ones occurred due to disqualifications. Now again, 8 PTI MNAs, including opposition leader Omer Ayub Khan, and 5 MPAs have been disqualified due to a court order sentencing them in the May 9 cases.
Meanwhile, another PTI MNA, Jamshed Dasti, was disqualified for providing false information. The by-election in his constituency has been suspended due to a court order. Similarly, the schedule of elections for a few seats has not yet been announced, pending court hearings.
Some may argue that the Election Commission of Pakistan was in a hurry to disqualify and announce by-elections, as the process of appeals against court orders is still ongoing. The ECP, however, would insist that it is acting as per the law.
On Saturday, the PML-N and the PPP announced that they would contest these by-elections jointly. The formula reportedly agreed upon between them is that the runner-up candidate from the previous election would be the joint candidate.
It is interesting to note that in the most recent by-election, held in June 2025, the PPP had accused the PML-N of rigging. The PPP had secured 6,832 votes in that election. The party’s Nadeem Afzal Chan had even said that the alliance with the PML-N had cost the party its support base, as people did not vote for them due to their alliance with that party. Despite this, the PPP is all set to ally again with the very party their voters rejected.
The ECP has so far announced dates for nine by-elections – NA-129 Lahore (vacant due to Mian Muhammad Azhar’s death), NA-66 Wazirabad and PP-87 Mianwali for September 18, 2025 while NA-96, NA-104 and PP-98 in Faisalabad, NA-143 and PP-203 Sahiwal and NA-185 DG Khan for October 5, 2025.
If we try to analyse the significance of the ruling parties’ alliance for the by-elections, there is little beyond rebutting recent rumours of cracks in the coalition.
All the by-elections announced so far are in Punjab, where the PPP had a share of less than 6.0 per cent votes in the 2025 general elections; the party got 4922 votes in NA-66; 12332 in NA-96; 3488 in NA-104; 3305 in NA-129; 6363 in NA-143; 2149 in PP-87; 5566 in PP-98; and 4127 in PP-203. The party’s position is no different in PP-73 Sargodha and PP-179 Kasur, where by-elections have not been announced yet.
These votes will not put a dent in the opposition’s winning margin in these constituencies. The only seat where the PPP had a higher vote count was NA-185, where it secured 26,627 votes. The PML-N had backed independent candidate Mehmood Qadir Khan on this seat.
Even in DG Khan, the combined vote of both candidates (65,862) was still 29,065 short of Zartaj Gul’s 94,927. Even on NA-18 Haripur, the seat that is vacant due to the disqualification of Omer Ayub Khan, the PPP secured only 3,991 votes.
The only seat where the PPP might get a ticket is NA-1 Chitral, vacant due to the disqualification of Abdul Rehman Chitrali. The PPP candidate was third and the PML-N’s fourth, with the runner-up being a JUI candidate.
On all other seats, the runner-up candidates were from the PML-N. The PPP may have realised that with an almost non-existent vote bank in nearly all these constituencies, there is little significance in contesting -- serving as face-saving for them and as a good gesture for the PML-N to show both parties are still on the same page.
