| Shaista Pervaiz secures 46, 811 votes while Aslam Gill gets 32,313

Seat had fallen vacant due to death of PML-N’s Pervaiz Malik

LAHORE    -  Amid a low turnout of voters and the absence of a PTI candidate, the PML-N managed to retain its National Assembly seat (NA-133) in a by-election held on Sunday against the backdrop of videos showing the selling and buying of votes by the supporters of rival candidates. 

According to unofficial results, the PML-N candidate Shaista Pervaiz Malik secured 46811 votes against 32313 of PPP’s Aslam Gill. The PTI candidate from NA-133, Jamshed Iqbal Cheema was technically knocked out of the election race in the very beginning. 

The seat had fallen vacant due to the death of PML-N’s Pervaiz Malik, and the party awarded the ticket to his spouse Shaista Pervaiz Malik who is already an MNA on a reserved seat for women. The reserved seat she is holding now will become vacant after her victory notification from NA-133 in a few days.  

The bye-election in NA-133 clearly lacked the traditional enthusiasm of voters most probably due to the absence of the PTI candidate. The PTI had asked its voters to abstain from the voting process. Also, the voters did not turn up in large numbers knowing full well that the victory or defeat of the candidates was not going to make any significant impact on the overall tally of the two parties in the National Assembly. The polling remained peaceful as no untoward incident was reported from any party of the constituency.  

In the 2018 general elections, Pervaiz Malik won the election securing 89678 votes. PTI’s Ejaz Ahmed Chaudhry was the runner-up with 77231 votes. PPP’s Aslam Gill had bagged 5585 votes at that time. 

Though the PPP candidate Aslam Gill could not win the seat as was being widely expected, he, however, sprang a surprise by securing over 32,00 votes from a constituency which has been a stronghold of the PML-N and the PTI for the last three or four elections. The PPP has attributed its good performance in the by-election to an effective electioneering. Senior PPP leaders Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Qamar Zaman Kaira, Ch Manzoor Ahmad, Hassan Murtaza and others have been doing door-to-door campaigns for the party candidate in the last one month. Also, the PPP-P president Asif Ali Zardari visited Lahore during the period and did some behind-the scenes political maneuvering while sitting in Bilawal House. 

The PPP had also secured the cooperation of Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) of Allama Tahirul Qadri and Jamaat-e-Islami, the two parties who had not fielded their candidates in the by-election. A PPP leader claimed that some PTI groups at the UC level also supported the PPP candidate in clear defiance of party instructions to abstain from the election process. 

Coming on the election results, the PML-N’s Rana Sana Ullah said that all the anti-PML-N votes went to the PPP candidate. He insisted that the PML-N retained its vote bank in the constituency though some of the voters did not cast their vote. PPP leader Ch Manzoor said the impressive result was the hard work of the PPP leaders who had been campaigning in the constituency day and night. He also said the PPP had been able to awaken its sleeping cadres through its door-to-door campaign