RAWALPINDI, Dec 25: A triangular intense battle is shaping up in the National Assembly constituency NA-54 Rawalpindi-V as candidates of three major political parties flex their muscles for the January 8 general elections.

The constituency comprises cantonment areas of the Rawalpindi district and holds many key installations and offices, including the army’s General Headquarters (GHQ). Lalazar forms the boundary of the constituency in the east, Kohinoor Mills in the west, R.A. Bazaar in the north and Quaid-i-Azam Colony near Dhamial Army Aviation base in the south.

It has 270,960 voters in all — 140,974 males and 129,986 female — for whom 203 polling stations would be set up. Zamarud Khan of the Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPP), and Muhammad Basharat Raja of the Muslim League-Q are the main contestants this time. In all 83,780 votes were polled in this constituency in 2002 elections, giving a turn out ratio of 39.97 per cent.

This time the PPP candidate’s position is said to be very strong, owing to the active role he played in the lawyers movement for restoration of the deposed chief justice and the independence of judiciary and rule of law since March 9. He is banking not just on the traditional PPP vote bank but also on the urban population’s sentiments for the deposed judges.

The second reason for the strong position of Mr Zamarud in the area is because of his Sheikh Rashid-style politics in the last five years when despite being on opposition benches he kept a close liaison with the people of his constituency.

Moreover, he also remained active during the transporters issue when the government gave exclusive rights to a transport company to ply their buses on Murree Road between Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

The total number of registered voters in 2002 was 209,619 and the turnout remained 39.97 per cent as only 83,780 voters used their right to vote.

Earlier, Zamarud Khan had contested the 1997 elections on provincial assembly seat from the area but lost to Basharat Raja.

But he faces an embarrassing situation on both counts as the lawyers’ community is for boycotting the Jan 8 elections and his party leader, Benazir Bhutto, has adopted an ambiguous stand on restoring the judiciary to its pre-Nov 3 status.

Malik Abrar Ahmed of Nawaz League (PML-N) is the third contender in the constituency. Despite the talk of his party being ready to back the PPP candidate to spite the PML-Q, Mr Abrar Ahmed has his eyes on the PML-N’s vote bank leftover from its hay days. Other candidates in the run are Allama Haider Alvi of Sunni Tehrik and independents — Asghar Mubarik Ali, Muhammad Javaid Iqbal, Pervaiz Mushtaq Hussain, Sajid Mehmood Khan, Muhammad Saleem, Maj (retd) Sultan Akhtar, Maj (retd) Mahr Muhammad Ramazan and Sumaira Gul.

Though won by PPP and PML-N in the past, it has been a traditional seat of the PML-N which retained it in three consecutive elections between 1990 and 1997.

In the 2002 elections, Zamarud Khan won the seat by defeating PML-N chairman Raja Mohammad Zafarul Haq, “Ziaul Haq’s opening batesman” with a margin of just over 2,600 votes bagging 31,491 votes. Earlier, the PPP had won this seat in the 1988 elections when Raja Shahid Zafar defeated IJI-backed candidate Mohammad Basharat Raja by a margin of about 16,000 votes.

Mr Zafar secured 60,701 votes whereas Basharat Raja obtained 44,719 votes. There were a total of six candidates in the run, but except for Riaz Hussain Shah, who had polled 38,996 votes, no one could show a better performance. The turnout in the 1988 election was 53.82 per cent as 147,207 persons came out to cast their votes out of total 273,497 registered voters.

In the 1990 election, Basharat Raja opted for the provincial election and Ijazul Haq was put in the field by the IJI to face PPP’s Raja Shahid Zafar. Mr Haq became the MNA for the first time after defeating the PPP candidate by a big margin of more than 30,000 votes. Mr Haq bagged 87,829 votes against 57,130 votes of Mr Zafar. The turnout in the election remained 53.79 per cent when 151,342 voters turned out at the polling stations out of the total 281,383 registered voters.

Ijazul Haq continued his winning spree in the 1993 and 1997 elections, and defeated PPP’s Raja Shahid Zafar in both the contests. In both the elections, Mr Haq polled more than 87,000 votes whereas Mr Zafar obtained 64,655 votes in 1993 and only 31,838 votes in the 1997 election.

However, the three-time winner Ijazul Haq faced a stunning defeat from the same constituency in the 2002 elections when he managed to get just 4,000 votes as compared to that of 87,000 he secured in all the three previous elections.

Dejected with his defeat, Mr Haq, who had previously contested the election from the platform of his own faction of the PML-Z, this time has decided not to contest from NA-54. Basharat Raja, who had earlier lost the election twice from the same constituency in 1985 and 1988, has once again decided to try his luck and is currently banking on the support of the local administration. His cousin Raja Hamid Nawaz is a Potohar Town Nazim and his brother Nasir Raja is also a candidate for the National Assembly seat NA-52 of Rawalpindi district.

Interestingly, Basharat Raja even lost the provincial assembly election from this constituency in the 2002 elections and later became MPA and the provincial law minister after contesting on a vacant seat from Gujrat.

Basharat Raja banks primarily on the money he arranged for the fund-starved Rawalpindi Cantonment Board. In his election campaign he has been citing development projects carried out in the constituency, such as water supply schemes and pavement of streets. But that impresses few people. Critics say most of the development was concentrated in areas surrounding his residence.

Above all his political party suffers from image problem for supporting a military ruler whose decisions such as military operations in Balochistan, Lal Masjid, Fata and Swat and removal of judges have not won acclaims of the people.