\u2022 Ruling party bags NA seats in Lahore, D.G. Khan, Sahiwal, Faisalabad; candidates lead other contests in Faisalabad, Haripur as per initial, unofficial results
\n\u2022 PPP wins one Punjab seat; five go to PML-N, with latter\u2019s lead in PP-98 race
\n\u2022 ECP chief downplays low participation, says voters not interested due to low stakes
\n\u2022 PTI alleges rigging in Lahore and Haripur; boycotts all other contests<\/p>\n
LAHORE \/ HARIPUR \/ ISLAMABAD: After polls closed in by-elections across 13 constituencies \u2014 for six national and seven provincial assembly seats \u2014 in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the ruling PML-N bagged almost all seats, except for one in Muzzafargarh, which was secured by the PPP, unofficial results showed in the early hours of Monday morning.<\/p>\n
The PML-N was also leading the polls in three other constituencies: two national and provincial seats in Faisalabad and one NA seat in Haripur, where the unofficial results had not been announced till the filing of this report.<\/p>\n
The six NA constituencies where polling was conducted included NA-18 (Haripur), NA-96 and NA-104 (Faisalabad), NA-129 (Lahore), NA-143 (Sahiwal) and NA-185 (Dera Ghazi Khan). The seven Punjab Assembly constituencies up for grabs included PP-73 (Sargodha), PP-87 (Mianwali), PP-98, PP-115, PP-116 (Faisalabad), PP-203 (Sahiwal), and PP-269 (Muzaffargarh).<\/p>\n
Amid an opposition boycott and low voter turnout, the by-polls were held in response to the disqualification of a number of PTI lawmakers following their conviction in May 9 violence cases. The main opposition PTI, however, stayed away from the electoral exercise, save for two National Assembly constituencies in Lahore and Haripur. The PML-N fielded its candidates on all seats except in Muzaffargarh, and the PPP contested on two NA and one Punjab seat.<\/p>\n
By Sunday night, the PML-N was in a position to win all the Punjab seats, except for PP-269, where the ruling party had not fielded a candidate against PPP\u2019s Alamdar Qureshi.<\/p>\n
According to Form-47 issued after midnight, PML-N candidate Mahmood Qadir Khan defeated PPP\u2019s Dost Mohammad Khosa by securing 82,419 votes against his rival\u2019s 49,226 votes in NA-185. In Lahore\u2019s NA-129, Mohammad Nauman of the PML-N emerged victorious with 63,441 votes while independent Arslan Ahmad got 29,099 votes.<\/p>\n
The ruling party also bagged the Sahiwal NA-143 seat, as its candidate secured 119,334 votes as per the unofficial results. Even before the Form-47 was issued, PM Shehbaz Sharif had congratulated Tufail Jutt, saying, \u201cUndoubtedly, with the victory in NA-143, the public has expressed its trust in the spirit of public service of the PML-N.\u201d In a tweet, he also congratulated the Lahore and Sahiwal provincial assembly candidates.<\/p>\n
In NA-104, PML-N\u2019s Danyal Ahmad bagged 52,791 votes against independent candidate Rana Adnan Javed\u2019s 19,262 votes.<\/p>\n
In NA-96, PML-N\u2019s Mohammad Bilal Badar secured 61,808 votes while independent candidate Nawab Sher Waseer secured 29,805 votes, according to results from 247 out of 345 polling stations.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, the PTI claimed to have secured a lead in Haripur, citing results from 341 polling stations. PTI insiders claimed that their candidates bagged 102,136 against Babar Nawaz\u2019s tally of 78,066 votes, citing results from 341 polling stations.<\/p>\n
However, by the time this report went to press, results from 292 out of 602 polling stations had been shared by the ECP on its media dashboard, showing PML-N candidate Babar Nawaz ahead with 81,655 votes against Shehrnaz Ayub\u2019s 56,981 votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2022 Ruling party bags NA seats in Lahore, D.G. Khan, Sahiwal, Faisalabad; candidates lead other contests in Faisalabad, Haripur as per initial, unofficial results \u2022 PPP wins one Punjab seat; five go to PML-N, with latter\u2019s lead in PP-98 race \u2022 ECP chief downplays low participation, says voters not interested due to low stakes \u2022 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13614,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13612\/revisions\/13614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}