KARACHI: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, senior PML-N leader has invited PTI leader Haji Muzaffar Ali Shujra from Karachi to join its ranks during a meeting on Saturday.
A delegation of senior PML-N leaders comprising former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, ex-minister Miftah Ismail and others met Shujra and offered him to join the party, according to sources, privy to the development.
Muzaffar Ali Shujra is a senior politician from Karachi who had joined the ruling PTI in 2018. “I am impressed with the long struggle of Imran Khan against corruption,” he had said while announcing his decision to switch his loyalties to Imran Khan’s party.
Shujra had served as PPP Karachi chapter and was a minister in the Sindh cabinet from 2003 to 2018.
Abbasi was in Karachi to inaugurate the party’s election office for NA 249 by-polls in Karachi from where Miftah Ismail is contesting on PML-N’s ticket.
Meanwhile, the PTI suffered a setback on Friday when its lawmaker Malik Shehzad Awan submitted his resignation after the party snubbed him in awarding the ticket for the NA-249 constituency.
Awan, a PTI lawmaker in the Sindh Assembly from PS 116, stepped down after submitting his resignation to Opposition leader Haleem Adil Sheikh.
He said Amjad Khan Afridi — the ruling party’s candidate for NA-249, which had fallen vacant after the previously-elected Faisal Vawda stepped down following his Senate victory — was “unpopular in the constituency”.
“I have to win this seat no matter what so I can gift it to Prime Minister Imran Khan,” Awan said. “That’s why I’ve submitted my resignation.”
According to the polling schedule for the NA-249 constituency, issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan earlier, voting would take place on April 29, 2021.
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