In major setback, PTI’s nominee for Karachi mayor slot loses to PPP

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) suffered a major setback in Sindh local body elections as its nominee for Karachi mayor slot lost union council election to the PPP candidate in Sunday’s polls.

According to partial results released by Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday, PTI Karachi chapter president and Sindh Assembly lawmaker Khurram Sher Zaman suffered defeat in UC XI of Sadar Town.

PPP candidate Najmi Alam won the UC election after he secured 2,696 votes.

As per the results of 94 seats out of 253 seats in Karachi division, the Pakistan Peoples Party is currently in the lead with 51 seats while the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) followed with 21 seats, and the Jamat-e-Islami (JI) secured 19 seats.

The results for the remaining 140 seats are still pending.

Reacting to the LB polls results, PPP leader and provincial minister Saeed Ghani said that PPP has emerged as the largest party of the metropolis in the polls.

Also read: PPP takes lead in Karachi as ECP reveals partial results

He also congratulated Jamaat-e-Islami on the election results, saying that his party is ready to work with everyone excluding PTI.

The ECP on Monday, while responding to criticism from political parties for the delay in issuing local body poll results, said it is a "complicated matter which takes time" and assured that results that have been compiled were being dispatched to the returning officers' (RO) office.

Speaking to the media, Provincial Election Commissioner for Sindh Ijaz Anwar Chauhan said the delay in results was caused by the need to compile the results.

"This is a complicated process and it takes time to prepare the result of one union council."

Chauhan explained that each UC had four wards and an average of 20 polling stations. He furthered that if the result of even one polling station was unavailable, the result of the entire UC would be incomplete.