Daily Times

Kasur: Infighting between influential families that have joined the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf over the last couple years leave the party a divided house in Kasur district. With just a month left in the election, the party has yet to solve disputes between these families.

In the previous elections, Kasur had five NA seats (from 138 to 142). With the new delimitations, it lost a national assembly seat. With the number of seats down from five to four, the area of the district’s constituencies has expanded. One influential family that has been affected by this division is the Nakais, whose trajectory features stints with the anti-PPP Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) as well as Junejo, Chattha and Quaid factions of the Muslim League.

In 2015, PTI chairman Imran Khan visited Wan Adhan hometown of the Nakais and convinced the family elders to join his party. The new delimitations have divided Nakais’ traditional stronghold areas and a large portion of old NA-140 from where Nakais contest elections has been added to new NA-139.

Come election season, however, the PTI gave NA-139 ticket to Azeemud Din Zahid Lakhvi instead of Sardar Muhammad Asif Nakai.

Lakhvi, who jumped ship from PML-Q just a month ago, had lost the 2013 election to Malik Rasheed Ahmad Khan of PML-N with a margin of 19,000 votes.

Subsequently, a disgruntled Asif Nakai entered the electoral race for the constituency as an independent.

However, social media campaigns by workers of the Nakai and Lakhvi factions and the Bani Gala sit-in led Imran Khan to suspend tickets of Lakhvi as well as of Sardar Talib Nakai (Asif’s brother) from NA-140. In an announcement made last Friday, while he was addressing party workers at Bani Gala, Khan said he would personally look into all disputed seats and settle the matter on merit.

While infighting continues in the PTI camp over the two constituencies, Rana Muhammad Ishaq Khan and Rana Muhammad Hayat Khan, PML-N ticket holders for NA-139 and NA-140, respectively, are set to gain an edge as they continue to run their campaigns in these areas.

In NA-140, Rana Muhammad Hayat Khan faces off Sardar Talib Hassan Nakai for the PTI ticket. In 2013, the former had defeated the latter with a margin of 19,000 votes in old NA-142.

In NA-138, there were three contenders for the PTI ticket. These were Rao Dawar Hayat, the son of former MNA Rao Mazhar Hayat; Sardar Rashid Tufail, son of ex-MPA Sardar Tufail Ahmad; and Barrister Bakhtiar Kasuri, a brother of Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri.

The party allotted the ticket to Sardar Rashid Tufail and accommodated Dawar Hayat on a provincial seat under NA-138. However, the Hayats and the Kasuris have since refused to extend cooperation to Sardar Tufail’s campaign.

Analysts believe that this rift will benefit PML-N candidate Malik Rasheed Ahmad Khan.

NA-137 comprises strongholds of PTI big guns Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri and Sardar Asif Ahmad Ali. Other aspirants for the party ticket were Mehar Saleem, a lawyer who is also known in the district for his extensive real estate business; and Qaisar Farooq Sheikh, a local businessman.

When the party decided to award the ticket to Sardar Asif, instead of endorsing his candidacy Kasuris, Saleem and Sheikh have reportedly backed the campaign of an independent contestant Nasira Mayo. With divisions in the PTI, the only two force that can pose a challenge to PML-N’s Waseem Akhtar Sheikh are the judiciary or the far-right Tehrik-e-Labbaik. The approval of Sheikh’s nomination papers depends on the Lahore High Court’s decision on challenges that is due on June 29. TLP has fielded Mufti Farooq-ul-Hassan, a local prayer leader, who is running a religiously-charged campaign against the N League.

Published in Daily Times, June 26^th 2018.