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Thursday March 28, 2024

Next Pindi mayor – a hardcore PML-N worker

By Tariq Butt
December 08, 2016

Islamabad

Sardar Nasim, picked up as the next lord mayor of the Rawalpindi Metropolitan Corporation (RMC) by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is a hardcore worker of modest financial means, whose services for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) are matchless.

He was awarded for his unwavering loyalty and commitment with the party in rain and shine for over three decades. The PML-N has clearly conveyed in his preference that it honours those who stood with it in difficult times and showed consistency.

As the jockeying for this most important mayoral slot continued for almost a year, some moneyed men also jumped in the fray who kept lobbying by using their connections to sideline Sardar Nasim.

However, amid this period of uncertainty and muddle, Sardar Nasim was conveyed by the PML-N decision makers more than once that he would be the final choice and he should not be much worried. But confusion was not going to vanish till the moment he was formally nominated by the premier.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who has a dominant role in the selection of top office bearers of the local governments in Rawalpindi district, also favoured Sardar Nasim.

It was stated that all the federal and provincial legislators of Rawalpindi, who contested the December 5, 2015 local elections as a cogent team, supported Sardar Nasim for the position. The district had experienced no fissures in the ranks of the ruling party during these polls, which led to its landslide victory contrary to the 2013 general elections.

As per the general practice, the PML-N leadership also sought the opinion and views of the federal and provincial lawmakers of the party belonging to the district while selecting its nominee.

Other PML-N leaders, who were in the run for the mayoral office of the RMC, were not known to have any steadfast and long affiliation with the party. Some of them jumped on the PML-N bandwagon some time back.

Sardar Nasim, belonging to the middle class, who was elected as the chairman of the Union Council (UC) 36 Rawalpindi, is the president of the PML-N Rawalpindi city for the past six years. Before that, he was its general secretary for twenty-eight years. During his over three-decade old association with the PML-N, he never dithered on his dedication to the party. He is the most senior leader of the party in Rawalpindi city.

He suffered two-year imprisonment during the ‘Tehreek-e-Nijat’ launched by Nawaz Sharif against the then Benazir Bhutto government. Besides, he was jailed for more than 25 times during Pervez Musharraf’s era for his political stand.

Sardar Nasim, along with Akhtar Rasool, Mian Mohammad Munir, Akhtar Mehmood, Chaudhry Tanvir and Tariq Aziz, all of them being federal and provincial lawmakers at the time, were sentenced by the Supreme Court for contempt in the 1997 case of storming the court at the height of confrontation between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah. They were imposed a life ban to stand for any elected office.

As a result of this conviction, Sardar Nasim could not contest the 2002 and 2008 general elections. However, the 18th constitutional amendment, passed six years ago, dispensed with this bar. Under the amended clause ‘g’ of Article 63, anybody convicted for defaming the judiciary, also including the contempt of court, will become eligible to contest an elected office five years after the completion of his term of imprisonment.

Sardar Nasim, who was elected as member of the Punjab assembly in 1997 parliamentary polls but lost his provincial seat from the Rawalpindi city in 2013 elections, got the record lead in the local government election when he was elected as the UC chairman.

While he faced the embargo, the Sharif brothers always wanted to accommodate him during their governments due to his constant faithfulness to the party. He also worked as the honorary chairman of the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) and worked with the chief minister’s monitoring cell.