LAHORE: According to a Tuesday article in The News, Lahori voters have a remarkable history of selecting a number of candidates to head their political parties in prior general elections.
Three prominent politicians, who are also the leaders of their parties, are running from Lahore in the elections on February 8. The leaders are Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and Abdul Aleem Khan, the president of the Istehkam Pakistan Party (IPP).
Nawaz is running from NA-130, Abdul Aleem Khan from NA-117, and Bilawal from NA-127. But this is not the first time the party’s upper echelons have selected Lahore as their constituency in a general election.
The top position in the party has been held by seven politicians who have run for and won the Lahore race. The first instance of this was during the general elections of 1970, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founder of the PPP and the party’s leader at the time, ran from Lahore. He entered the race from National West (NW) 60 and defeated Javaid Iqbal, Allama Iqbal’s son, from this constituency, winning by a sizable majority.
Bhutto received over 78,000 votes in that campaign, while Javaid Iqbal, the Convention Muslim League (PML-C) candidate, received about 34,000 votes. It is important to note that in 1970, Iqbal and his son-in-law Mian Salah ud Din ran unsuccessful campaigns from Lahore for seats in the National Assembly.
Benazir Bhutto, the co-chair of the PPP at the time, ran for office in 1988 from the same seat that her father had held in 1970. She prevailed in that election by a wide majority.
Nawaz ran for both NA-92 and NA-95 in 1993, and he easily won both seats. In 2002, Makhdoom Javaid Hashmi served as the PML-N’s acting president when the Sharif family was living abroad. He ran from Lahore’s NA-123 seat, which he ultimately won. Remarkably, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who ran on the PPP ticket at the time, caused him to lose his home seat in Multan.
Dr. Tahir ul Qadri, the chairman of Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), ran and prevailed in the 2002 general election from the then NA-127.
Shehbaz Sharif, who was leading the PML-N and acting as the party president, gained a seat in the National Assembly as well as a provincial assembly member from Lahore in the 2018 general elections.
Similarly, Imran Khan, the leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and its founder, ran and won from the NA-130 seat in Lahore.
In this manner, seven political individuals, who simultaneously held the highest position in their respective parties, have won general elections on Lahore’s turf.
Of all the cities in Pakistan, Lahore is the only one where five former national athletes and the most number of women have been elected directly in a general or by-election.
