PPP tasks ex-police officer Farooq Awan with wooing voters for NA-249 by-poll

KARACHI: The Pakistan Peoples Party has tasked retired senior police officer Farooq Awan with helping its candidate in the NA-249 constituency by using his own relationship he had made during his decades-long service there, The News has learnt.

Awan, who retired as senior superintendent of police Investigation South Zone-1 in 2019, showed his first public political appearance on Friday as a key leader of the PPP in an electoral rally of the party’s candidate, Qadir Khan Mandokhel, in Baldia Town.

Addressing a joint electoral rally of the PPP and the Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM) as chief guest, Awan thanked

the latter’s central leadership for supporting the former’s candidate in the NA-249 by-poll.

“The PPP is a party of martyrs and residents of the Baldia Town would vote in the upcoming by-poll because they want to carry out development work in the area.”

Awan said the residents of the constituency were deprived of basic amenities. “After winning the poll with a great margin, the PPP will make the area a model constituency for the rest of the country,” said the retired police officer.

Interviews with PPP leaders in District West suggest that the PPP has tasked Awan with intensifying the by-polls campaign for Mandokehl in Baldia Town by using his own personal contacts in the constituency. He has been introducing Mandokhel to notables of various ethnic communities residing in the constituency to gain their support.

A few days ago, he had hosted a reception in honour of elders and notables of the Awan clan living in the constituency and asked them to vote for Mandokhel.

“It seems that PPP has been giving him [Awan] a key position, whether in the party or government level, to organise the party in the city where he had severed as a police officer for decades in various capacities.

Awan, a senior police officer who had retired from the Sindh police in 2019, had served in various positions and played a key role in counterterrorism operations in the city against Taliban militants, criminal syndicates and the militant wing of ethno-political parties.

In 2014, he narrowly escaped a bomb attack by the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in the DHA area. At that time, he was serving as SSP West.

Awan’s brother, Shahat Awan, former Sindh prosecutor general and the counsel for former president Asif Ali Zardari in various cases, has recently been made a senator from Sindh.

PTI central leader Faisal Vawda resigned from the NA-249 seat after casting his vote in the Senate elections in March. The by-election will take place on April 29.