NA-4 Peshawar by-polls
PESHAWAR: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is sparing no effort to win the NA-4 seat as its local leaders and workers are actively running a spirited election campaign to seek support for their candidate.
All the former provincial presidents and other leaders of the party have been tasked to head campaign monitoring committees at the union council level and would submit report to the PPP President Asif Ali Zardari on a daily basis.
In his recent four-day visit to Peshawar, Zardari formed committees for all the 26 union councils in NA-4 Peshawar under senior leaders from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to personally monitor the campaign, pursue the dissidents and bring out the voters on the polling day on October 26.
The seat fell vacant after the death of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) dissident Member National Assembly (MNA) Gulzar Khan.
The PPP nominated his son Asad Gulzar, who recently joined the party, to contest the by-election.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has fielded Nasir Khan Musazai, PTI has put up Arbab Aamir Ayub, Awami National Party (ANP) nominated Khushdil Khan and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) named Wasil Farooq Chamkani as their candidate for the by-polls. A few independent candidates are also in the run.
Former PPP provincial presidents including Rahimdad Khan, Nawabzada Khwaja Mohammad Khan Hoti, Anwar Saifullah Khan, Senator Khanzada Khan, Syed Zahir Ali Shah and Sardar Ali Khan, former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Kiramatullah Khan and the losing PPP candidate for NA-4 in the 2013 election, Misbahuddin would lead the committees at some of the union councils. They have been directed to present report of their work on a daily basis to Zardari.
A patty official Ghazanfar Khan is supervising the election campaign in Union Council Badaber-1, Kiramatullah has been assigned Union Council, Badaber-II, which is the village of the ANP candidate, Khushdil Khan. Senator Khanzada Khan is in-charge of the committee for Union Council Matani bordering Khyber Agency and Darra Adamkhel.
Nawabzada Khwaja Mohammad Khan Hoti is heading the committee for Union Council Musazai, which is the village of the federal government’s backed PML-N candidate, Nasir Musazai.
Rahimdad Khan is suupervising the committee for Bahadar Killay.
Zahir Ali Shah has been assigned to look after the affairs of two union councils, Hazarkhwani and Akhunabad, while Sardar Ali Khan is monitoring three union councils including Urmar Bala, Urmar Payan and Urmar Miana.
Misbahuddin, who had contested election from NA-4 and obtained 12,073 votes in the 2013 general election, would be the in-charge of Sheikhan Union Council.
The PPP activists from other districts of the province are visiting various union councils on a daily basis to seek the support of voters.
PPP Mardan city President Javed Khan and General Secretary Laiq Nawaz are among the many party activists who are running the election campaign in NA-. “We have obtained the voters’ list and started door-to-door campaign for our party candidate. We are not familiar with the area and it is not easy to easily access the voters,” said Laiq Nawaz.
Referring to the worsening law and order in the suburban union council assigned to him, Javed Khan said one of the polling station, Banda and Zarah Killay, Janay Garhi was situated near Darra Adamkhel while Maroofkhel Akakhel, Sheen Drang were located near the boundary of Khyber Agency.
Javed Khan said that being political workers they know how to run the election campaign. “Though the PML-N and PTI candidates are using state resources as they are being backed by the federal and provincial governments respectively, we will win the election by a huge margin,” he claimed.
