PPP's Waqar Mehdi elected senator unopposed

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Waqar Mehdi was elected senator unopposed on a vacant seat on Saturday, Express News reported.

All the MQM-P candidates withdrew from the Senate election under an agreement, while PPP candidate Aziz Dhamra also withdrew his nomination papers, after which Mehdi was elected unopposed.

This is the first time that a senator has been elected uncontested from a Sindh seat. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has also issued a notification in this regard.

Read more: MQM-P withdraws from Senate seat race

Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon, while congratulating Mehdi, said the election was a continuation of former president and PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari's reconciliation policy.

Memon said that his party had a majority in the Sindh Assembly and Mehdi could have won easily but PPP's vision is to take everyone forward together.

He said that PPP today again brought another political worker to the upper house which is a success of the party's ideology.

Talking to the media, Sindh Minister for Local Government (LG) Syed Nasir Hussain said that the name of MQM-P's Abdul Waseem is being considered for the position of Karachi Administrator.

He also said that negotiations were underway to include MQM-P in the Sindh government.

A day earlier, a delegation of the PPP, led by Nasir Hussain Shah, reached the MQM-P headquarters in Bahadurabad.

After the meeting, while talking to the media, MQM-P Deputy Convener Waseem Akhtar said, "Following a request from our friends from PPP, the Rabita Committee has decided after consultation to withdraw MQM-P candidate from the Senate election."

Shah thanked the MQM-P leadership and said that the administrator of MQM-P will also be appointed in Karachi in a few days while the discussion on constituencies is also going on and soon there will be progress in this matter too.