Fortune not favouring PTI’s Ashraf Qureshi who lost his sixth election

Even though the wave of ‘change’ helped many associated with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf sweep the July 2018 general polls in Karachi, there is one PTI candidate who has lost his sixth election since 1997 despite a long association with the party.

Ashraf Qureshi, a PTI leader who has been considered one of the party’s founding members in the city, could not win the recent PS-94 (District Korangi) by-polls held on Sunday, losing to Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan’s candidate Syed Hashmi Raza. Qureshi ranked second by securing 9,223 votes, while the MQM-P’s Raza bagged 21,728 votes, according to the unofficial election results.

Qureshi, who has served as PTI Karachi president in the past and is currently serving as the divisional secretary general, has a history of contesting elections under the PTI banner. But fortune has yet to favour him. Even in the 2018 general elections when the PTI managed to win 14 out of the city’s 21 National Assembly seats, Qureshi remained out of luck. He contested from NA-253, a District Central constituency comprising the areas of New Karachi, but lost to the MQM-P’s candidate Usama Qadri with a margin of over 13,000 votes.

The PTI leader started contesting with the 1997 general elections from a similar constituency when it was NA-189. However, he bagged merely 1,434 votes against the MQM’s candidate Hasan Masna Alvi, who won the seat by securing more than 100,000 votes.

In the 2001 local government polls, the PTI fielded Qureshi as a candidate for city Nazim against the Jamaat-e-Islami’s candidate Naimatullah Khan and lost badly. In the 2002 general polls, Qureshi contested election from District East’s then PS-118 but lost to the MQM’s Faisal Sabzwari who won the seat by bagging 15,204 votes. Qureshi ranked four in that contest with just 2,999 votes.

Qureshi did not contest elections in the 2008 general polls but in the 2013 general polls, he contested from District East’s NA-253 where he ranked second by securing more than 61,000 votes. He again lost to an MQM candidate, Muzammil Qureshi, who won the seat by bagging more than 100,000 votes.

In the 2018 general polls, he was interested in contesting from the same constituency which was rebranded as NA-243 after new delimitation. But, after party chief Imran Khan was finalised to contest from there, Qureshi chose to fight from District Central’s redrawn NA-253 constituency. When NA-243 fell vacant after Imran Khan, who won from five constituencies decided to keep his hometown seat from Mianwali, Qureshi became one among the four key aspirants for the by-polls. However, the party gave the ticket to Alamgir Mehsud, the young leader who got popularity from the #FixIt campaign. Alamgir won the seat by a great margin.

‘Sidelined’

Party insiders and journalists who cover the PTI extensively believe that Qureshi is one of the party’s old guard but the current leadership has largely ignored him.

According to a PTI’s founding member, Qureshi joined the party since its formation in 1996 and served as party’s Karachi coordination secretary and member of the central executive committee. Later, he was made Sindh president of the party’s youth wing. When the party was in the worst condition in 2007, Qureshi was made the Karachi president.

Munir Ahmed Shah, a journalist who covers political parties, said that after the rise of the party’s popularity in 2012, Qureshi and other leaders were sidelined by the party’s central leaders who were close to Imran Khan. “That is the reason the party leadership did not give him a ticket from a safe seat in the 2018 general polls,” Shah told The News.

Qureshi is known for openly criticising the party leadership in Sindh. In 2016, he along with other like-minded leaders formed ‘PTI Bachao Tehreek’ which he announced during a press conference outside the party’s Karachi office. He claimed that the PTI has been hijacked by a gang of four people – Arif Alvi, Ali Zaidi, Imran Ismail and Firdous Shamim Naqvi.

Before that, in the December 2015 local government polls, Qureshi announced to form “Imran Tiger Panel” for the elections and said that party leaders Arif Alvi and Ali Zaidi had sold the party to the Jamaat-e-Islami in the local government polls.

Party leaders who were campaigning for Qureshi in PS-94 for Sunday’s election also said that party’s central leaders did not work for him in by-polls and only PTI Karachi President Khurram Sher Zaman visited the constituency to run his campaign. “Other leaders such as Zaidi, Naqvi and Faisal Vawda did not bother to visit to help Qureshi in his campaign,” said Anis Ahmed, a PTI member in Landhi.