No candidate against Nisar: Nawaz turns down PML-N’s committee recommendation

ISLAMABAD: PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif instantly shot down the recommendation of a party committee to not field its candidates in four national and provincial constituencies of Rawalpindi against estranged senior leader Ch Nisar Ali Khan.

“The proposal was killed right away by Nawaz Sharif without assigning any

reasons after it was received by him,” a senior PML-N leader, who is constantly in touch with the party supremo, currently in London to be on the side of his ailing wife Begum Kulsoom, told The News on condition of anonymity.

The development coming a day after a widespread impression of a thaw was created would heighten the confrontation between Nawaz Sharif and Nisar, who have had their relations at the lowest ebb for many months now.

The PML-N leader said a party committee that had been formed sometime back to look into certain contentious constituencies, including those that Nisar is contesting. It suggested that the PML-N should not sponsor its candidates in the former interior minister’s four constituencies because this would divide the party vote, he said.

He said Nawaz asked the formulators of the proposal how the PML-N vote would split if the party would not put any contenders for these seats. The PML-N supreme leader found no convincing reply.

Nawaz told them if the PML-N fields its own representatives in these four constituencies, its vote would not divide because its nominees would get it en masse.

The PML-N leader said Sardar Mumtaz, who will face Nisar in the Taxila constituency of the National Assembly, has been given two candidates of his choice for the Punjab Assembly seats falling under him.

In the other National Assembly constituency, same has been done for Rana Qamarul Islam, who is also contesting one of the provincial seats falling in his federal seat. Chaudhry Tanvir’s nephew Ch Sarfraz Afzal has also been sponsored for one of these provincial seats.

Nawaz’s decision adopted “no forget, no forgive” policy vis-à-vis Nisar, who will become more aggressive in the days to come, and who has repeatedly declared that he needs no ticket because of his own standing in the area.

The ex-premier’s determination also made it clear that bitterness between the two sides has become too deep to be alleviated in the near future. Shahbaz Sharif, who backed the recommendation of the party committee, proved to be helpless in making the two sides to bury the hatchet. Now their differences, which surfaced over the past two years and kept deteriorating, are unbridgeable after more than three decades of matchless camaraderie and understanding.

Saturday’s PML-N decision not to field its representatives against Nisar displayed that everything had not been lost between the two groups. To some extent they had stuck to their “principled” stands--the PML-N did not award him its tickets as he did not produce himself before the parliamentary board for interview, and he refused to appear before it saying he has never done so over the three decades. A day before, Nisar had addressed a highly toned down presser, making several “clarifications” about his relations with Nawaz Sharif as well as the PML-N. His talk had lacked the usual hard-hitting remarks against the top party leadership, pointing to a likely rapprochement.

It was also certainly consoling for Nisar that the PML-N had given its ticket to his brother-in-law Malik Asif Ali for PP-3 Attock.