Election fever: All is fair in AJK as election campaigns gain momentum

Four contestants in the running for the all-important seat of state capital.

MUZAFFARABAD:

All is fair in Azad Jammu & Kashmir as political parties campaign for the upcoming elections on June 26. Contestants from the three major parties, the ruling Muslim Conference, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), have been calling in favours. Some have even resorted to try and exploit sectarian divides to gain electoral points.

One of the important constituencies is that of the state capital LA26 Muzaffarabad-III.

Four candidates are contesting this seat: Raja Farooq Haider Khan, PML-N chief and former AJK prime minister, Usman Ali Khan, scion of AJK Prime Minister Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan, Khawaja Farooq Ahmed, PPP nominee, and Muhammad Hanif Awan.

All four candidates have been doing door to door visits and actively pursuing their election campaign.

Raja Farooq is gunning for the premiership. He is also contesting from his native constituency Muzaffarabad /Hattian Bala- 5, LA-28 against PPP’s Ashfaq Zaffar.

Khawaja had defeated the former PM Abdul Qayyum Khan and Usman Ali Khan’s grandfather in the 1996 elections. In case Usman loses to Khawaja in the current elections, it would be quite damaging for his father and serving PM, Attique Ahmed Khan.

Khawaja, who had joined Barrister Sultan Mehmood’s People’s Muslim League in 2006, had then been defeated by Awan on a PPP ticket. However in the current elections Awan rebelled against the party leadership after he was refused a ticket and is contesting as an independent candidate. Khawaja has been contesting elections from Muzaffarabad since 1985. He joined PPP in 1995 and deserted it in the 2006 election.

He has little at stake compared to the other contestants though he can hardly afford another consecutive defeat while fighting two nonlocal candidates, Raja Farooq and Usman Attique.



Published in The Express Tribune, June 19th, 2011.