GUJRAT: Ruling PML-N’s candidates for mayor and deputy mayor slots of Gujrat Municipal Corporation, ex-MPA Haji Nasir Mehmood and Chaudhry Asif Mahmood, respectively, have been elected unopposed unofficially when their rivals’ papers were rejected.

The development occurred after rejection of the nomination papers of PML-Q candidates for the top slots -- Mian Pervez Akhtar Pagganwala and Saleem Kamboh -- when PTI’s lone chairman from an urban union council of the city, who was mentioned as their proposer, appeared before Returning Officer Afzal Butt and stated that he had not signed their nomination papers.

The PTI man alleged his signatures of their papers were fake. After confirming the allegation, the RO rejected the papers of both Q candidates.

On the other hand, PML-N’s dissident group’s deputy mayor slot candidate, Tahir Manda, who had filed his nomination papers from the panel of Ashraf Rehania, aspirant for the mayor post, withdrew his candidature during scrutiny process on Saturday.

Meanwhile, four of the six chairmen of the PML-N dissident group have also announced to quit the alliance after a senior party leader, Chaudhry Ahmed Saeed, intervened to defuse the situation. Mr Saeed, according to sources, convinced the chairmen to back the party’s officially announced candidate, Haji Nasir Mahmood.

Following this, Haji Nasir Mehmood and Asif Mehmda have been unofficially elected unopposed mayor and deputy mayor, respectively.

For Sara-i-Alamgir Municipal Committee, the panel of ruling party’s district president MPA Malik Hanif Awan’s group, the candidates for chairman and vice chairman slots, Advocate Mirza Haq Nawaz and Chaudhary Naveed Saleem, respectively, were elected unopposed, unofficially as no other candidate filed nomination papers for the top slots.

Meanwhile, the returning officer for the poll for Gujrat district council’s chairman and vice chairman slots has also cleared the nomination papers of all three panels, including two of the PML-N -- an officially nominated panel comprising Tanveer Kotla for chairman slot and Mian Sher Afghan and Shoaib Raza for vice chairman slot, besides a covering panel comprising Nawabzada Tahirul Mulk for chairman seat and two others for vice chairmen slots.

The nomination papers of the joint candidate of PML-Q and PTI, Begum Sameera Elahi, sister of PML-Q chief Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain, for the chairperson Gujrat district council slot, as well as of both candidates for vice chairmen slots of her panel -- Syed Faizul Hassan Shah and Chaudhary Haneef Besa, belonging to the PTI, from Kharian and Sara-i-Alamgir tehsils, have also been cleared during the scrutiny.

In Lalamusa, nomination papers of former Kharian tehsil Nazim Nadeem Kaira and PPP’s Sheikh Khalid Mehmood for the chairman and vice chairman slots of municipal committee have been cleared.

The papers of Shabeer Bhatti, being jointly backed by the PTI and PML-N, for the slot of Lalamusa MC chairman have also been cleared during scrutiny.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2016