All bets are on…

GUJRANWALA: Bookies in the Gujranwala district have already gathered Rs300 million in bets favouring Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) contender in the NA100 by-polls scheduled to be held on August 5.

Political pundits of the area foresee a neck-and-neck contest between PPP and Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N) candidates in the forthcoming elections. The election campaign and sloganeering is at its peak in the district and both federal and provincial governments have inaugurated several development projects in the constituency to boost their candidate’s chances in the polls.

People in the constituency have started placing bets on the winning candidate. According to a bookie Billo Mir, he has already gathered Rs15 million in bets placed on the by-election. He said that if people bet, for instance, Rs1,000 on the PPP contender then they would win Rs500 because he was the favourite, while any person betting Rs1,000 on the PML-N candidate would get Rs2,000 since he was not the popular choice. Two other bookies requested anonymity and admitted that they had also booked Rs15 million from speculators so far.

Political pundits have said that NA100 is the hub of politics based on a a clan system of sorts. “The Jats, Rajputs and Gujjars play a significant role in the constituency election. It is as much a ‘caste’ election as a political one,” said local Salman Haider.

The pundits said that Chaudhry Khalid Pervaiz Virk and Irfan Bashir Gujjar, MPAs from PP101 and PP102 respectively, assured the chief minister that they would support Nahra but were actually supporting the PPP candidate.

Locals said that majority of the Jat clan would support Nahra, adding that the urban vote bank of Nosheran Virkan Kashmiris, Arains, Sheikhs, Mughals and Kumyar were likely to cast their votes in favour of the candidate Nahra.

The Punjab Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, is expected to visit the constituency on August 2, 2010 to support his party’s candidate.

According to Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) data the NA100 fell vacant after the disqualification of PML-N MNA Mudassar Qayyum Nahra. Fourteen candidates filed their nomination papers on June 30 before the returning officers (RO).

Their papers were scrutinised and verified from July 6 to July 12. The RO finalised the candidates’ list and out of the fourteen candidates, Azhar Qayyum Nahra, the younger brother of disqualified Nahra became the PML-N candidate for the polls; Khalid Mehmood Manj of PML-Q and Chaudhry Tassadaq Masood Khan from the PPP are the main contenders for the constituency.

Khan is a former union council nazim, PML-N’s 27-year-old Azhar Qayyum is new to politics while PML-Q’s Manj belongs to the union council level.

Independent candidates for NA100 include Babar Iftikhar Rana, Ch Sadaqat Hussain Gujjar, Haji Abdul Ghafoor Gujjar, Khalid Fayaz Khokar and Rao Muhammad Zahid Ali Khan. Other independent candidates Sohail Zia Manj, Rana Sher Haider Mubarak, Sarfraz Khan Chatha, Muhammad Asgher Warraich and Abid Usman withdrew in favour of PPP contender Chaudhry Tassadaq Masood Khan.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 2^nd, 2010.