Daily Times

The PIAF-Founder Alliance on Friday made clean sweep by winning all the 7 seats of Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) Corporate Class for year 2020-21. Total 948 votes were polled out of 3179 while 19 votes were rejected due to technical reasons. The PIAF-Founder Alliance got 701 panel votes while the other candidates could secure only 21 panel votes. Election Commission was consisting of Sohail Lashari, Shahid Hassan Sheikh and Haroon Shafiq Chaudhry.

As per the details, the winning candidates include Mian Tariq Misbah ur Rehman, Syed Mardan Ali Zaidi, Ch Tahir Manzoor, Muhammad Nadeem Qureshi, Abdul Wadood Alvi, Malik Riaz Iqbal and Mubashar Naseer Butt. Tahir Malik and Muhamad Nawaz couldn’t make it to secure their seats in the Corporate Class.

According to the result announced on Friday, Mian Tariq Misbah ur Rehman from Pharmasales International (Pvt) Ltd got 872 votes, Syed Mardan Ali Zaidi from Swera Departmental Store got 841 votes, Tahir Manzoor Ch from Lever Engineering Industries got 834 votes, Muhammad Nadeem Qureshi from 4B Gentel International (Pvt) Ltd got 826 votes, Abdul Wadood Alvi from Adan Printers got 800 votes, Malik Riaz Iqbal from Nadir Saidjan Industries got 787 votes and Mubashar Naseer Butt from Body Media International (Pvt) Ltd got 783 votes. Tahir Malik from Trafco Logistics (Pvt) Ltd and Muhammad Nawaz from Farooq Glass Industries could get only 155 and 139 votes respectively.

In the second phase, polling for Associate Class would be held today (September 26). As many as 10,670 associate class members will cast their votes. Muhammad Kashif Bashir, Nasir Hameed Khan, Mian Maqbool Siddiqi, M. Saleem Asghar Bhatti, Shahzad Butt, Muhammad Naeem Hanif, Shahid Nazir Ch, Muhammad Ali Afzal, Muhammad Amjad Chaudhry, Mian Javed Ali, Ali Raza, Zain Elahi, Nabeel Mehmood, Chaudhry Muhammad Rashid, Muhammad wasim Abbas, Sajid Aziz Meer, Muhammad Asim, Mian M. Kamran Saif, Rana Muhammad Riaz, Muhammad Saveed, Muhammad Mansha Bhatti and Muhammad Khalid are in the run for eight seats. The final results will be announced on September 30 in scheduled Annual General Meeting.

The Election Commission also thanked both the groups for holding the polling process in peaceful way as no untoward incident took place during the polling. The polling remained continued from 9 am to 6 pm with one-hour break of Friday prayer.

There were two groups contesting the elections of LCCI. The PIAF-Founder Alliance and Lahore Businessman Front were two main groups in the contest. The PIAF-Founder Alliance had candidates on all the 16 seats. On the other hand, the LBF has candidates on all the seats of Associate Class while they had no candidate on the seats of Corporate Class.

It is pertinent to mention here that the turnout remained very low this year due to the COVID-19. The campaign was also marred with the COVID-19 and therefore the turnout was low this year. The businessmen and traders were afraid of COVID-19 and most of them also preferred not to go outside for the election campaign. Earlier, it used to be special feature of LCCI elections that huge gatherings, lunches and dinners were hosted for the voters but it was not the same this year due to the COVID-19 as only few dinners could be possible this time. Different traders’ bodies and associations used to hold their functions at huge marriage halls and marquees in the past but it wasn’t possible this year.