SAHIWAL, Sept 10: The Election Commission of Pakistan has announced that polling on the recently vacated provincial assembly seat PP-220, Sahiwal-I, will be held on Oct 13.

The seat fell vacant after Pir Walayat Shah Khagga, former PML-Q MPA, was disqualified by the Lahore High Court’s Election Tribunal for having fake university degree. The petition was filed by Nazar Muhammad Fatyana in 2008.

The election commission is seeking application from constituents to fill the vacant seat.

According to the ECP schedule, the dates for filing of nomination papers with the returning officer are Sept 14 and 15.

The papers will be scrutinised on Sept 19-20 and the date for filing appeals against decisions of the returning officer is Sept 22.

The last date for withdrawal of candidature is Sept 28 after which the revised list will be displayed on Sept 29.

It is learnt that Hamza Shahbaz and Sardar Zulfiqar Khosa are set to visit Sahiwal to finalise the PML-N candidate.

There are strong indications that Pir Walayat Shah Khagga will bag the PML-N ticket for the coming by-poll.

The PPP and the PML-Q have yet to finalise the candidate for the PP-220.

Mr Khagga won the seat by bagging 24,880 votes against Nazar Muhammad Fatyana’s 16,522.

WATER SCARCITY: Two of the three tube-wells supplying drinking water to Bhutto Nagar have gone dysfunctional, making people suffer heavily.

Bhutto Nagar, one of the most congested and low-income localities of Sahiwal city, houses more than 15,000 people, according to local political activist Amin Raza.

This correspondent visited the three tube-wells installed near Jhal Road and learnt that two of these had been dysfunctional for quite some time.

Tube-well No.14 went out of order after a fault in its power transformer a month ago and tube-well No.13 has been out of orderfor the last one year because of theft of its machinery allegedly by the TMA staff.

“Tube-well No.13 has been awaiting new machinery for the last one year,” says Muhammad Ashraf, a resident of Bhutto Nagar’s Street No.3.

Tube-well No.14 operator Iqbal said he reported the matter to the tehsil municipal administration, but officials took nomeasure to solve the problem.

Locals said TMA administrator Aamira Khan visited the broken tube-wells a month ago, noted down resident’s water problems and assured them that their problems would be solved within a week.

However, there was no improvement in the situation to date.