Party threatens action on every forum as ECP prepares Nov 12 hearing on NA-77 complaints.
LAHORE: The president of the Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML), Khalid Masood Sindhu, has demanded that Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz withdraw and apologise for remarks lumping his party with “banned organisations” after the NA-77 Gujranwala by-election, warning that the party would otherwise move against her “on every available forum”.
The ultimatum shifts a quarrel over a disputed vote count into a direct confrontation between a registered religious-political party and the most powerful office-holder in Pakistan’s largest province, two days before the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) takes up complaints arising from the same contest.
In a statement issued in Lahore, Sindhu said the people of Pakistan knew the PMML had won Sunday’s by-election, and accused the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of trying to manipulate the outcome through federal and provincial ministers, members of the national and provincial assemblies, polling staff and police.
“Rather than answering the questions raised about the election, the chief minister has made baseless allegations against our party. This reflects political panic and a lack of public support,” Sindhu said.
“I ask you to take back your remarks. Otherwise, the PMML reserves the right to take action against you on every available forum,” he added, addressing Maryam Nawaz directly.
There was no immediate public response from the chief minister’s office or the PML-N to the demand by the time of publication.
CM Punjab Targets PTI
The remarks at the centre of the row came in a post on X on Monday, in which Nawaz, replying to a party supporter, said all the “dangerous banned organisations”, including the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had contested against the PML-N in Gujranwala under a new name and had been left in the dust despite joining forces.
She returned to the theme on Tuesday at a laptop and scholarship ceremony in Jhelum, a district where she has recently ordered an end to market closures for VIP visits, telling the audience that banned organisations had made every effort to win the recent by-elections but the ruling party had prevailed.
Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari went further on Monday, asking how organisations proscribed by the state could change their names and openly take part in politics, and calling on the ECP to take notice. She also circulated a video she said showed PMML supporters stamping ballot papers in front of election staff; the provincial election commissioner directed the returning officer to investigate and report.
A contested count
Provisional Form-47 figures from all 333 polling stations gave PML-N’s Rashid Bashir Virk 43,365 votes against 30,218 for the PMML’s Qazi Muhammad Ibrahim Gujjar, a margin of 13,147, on a turnout of about 15.6% of the constituency’s 518,620 registered voters, as The Lahore Times reported on Monday.
The PMML’s own tally, drawn from 283 stations, shows Gujjar ahead with 25,377 votes to roughly 24,000 for Virk. The party has not published a station-by-station reconciliation of the two sets of numbers.
Sindhu said the party’s central information secretary, Faisal Nadeem, had already laid out evidence of irregularities at a press conference and put questions to the government and the ECP. Nadeem alleged that thousands of ballot papers went missing and were used at other stations, that presiding officers skipped voters’ thumb impressions and that Punjab Police pressured voters on the PML-N’s behalf. He said the man in Bokhari’s video was a presiding officer named Shahid, not a party worker, and offered an audio recording for forensic examination.
The party wants a recount at 50 polling stations and action against officials it holds responsible, a demand detailed in our earlier report on the PMML’s challenge.
ECP scrutiny cuts both ways
The commission’s docket for Thursday, Nov 12, is already crowded. It has summoned Federal Information Minister Attaullah Tarar after he flew into the constituency by helicopter on Nov 7 and addressed a gathering for Virk, an appearance that public office holders are barred from under the code of conduct. The show-cause notice followed a complaint from the PMML’s Sufyan Nazir.
Virk himself received a notice for inviting the minister, and explanations were sought from PML-N legislators including MNA Saira Afzal Tarar, MPA Qudsia Batool and Parliamentary Secretary Shazia Rizwan over polling-day visits to stations. The ECP has said the NA-77 result could be held back until it decides the Tarar matter.
Under the Elections Act 2017, the commission must notify the winner in the official gazette within 14 days of polling, which puts the deadline at Nov 22, while the successful candidate’s return of election expenses is due by Nov 18.
The lawyer’s warning
Sindhu framed his threat in legal terms, citing his years as senior vice-president of the Supreme Court Bar Association and saying he understood the implications of publicly branding a registered party as banned.
That distinction sits at the heart of the dispute. The PMML is enlisted with the ECP, contested the February 2024 general election on the chair symbol, and fielded candidates in every national and provincial constituency that year, with Sindhu himself standing against PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif in Lahore’s NA-130. It won no seats.
The party is widely described as an offshoot of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, founded by Hafiz Saeed, who has been in prison since 2019 in terror-financing cases. Its predecessor, the Milli Muslim League, was refused registration by the ECP in 2017. The PMML has consistently denied any link to JuD or any proscribed group.
Should Sindhu pursue a defamation claim, he would be unable to use the province’s newest tool. The Punjab Defamation Act 2024, pushed through by Nawaz’s own government, has been effectively frozen since the Lahore High Court tied any proceedings under it to its final ruling on challenges brought by journalists; those petitions were referred to the chief justice in April this year for a fresh bench. Older defamation law, the courts and the ECP remain open to him.
The government’s position is also complicated by its own ranks. Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry recently visited the PMML’s office in Faisalabad, a call that sits awkwardly beside the provincial cabinet’s description of the party as a front for a proscribed organisation.
From Virk stronghold to two-horse race
NA-77 fell vacant when five-time MNA Chaudhry Mahmood Bashir Virk died on Sept 11. In 2024 he held the seat with 109,704 votes against 91,825 for PTI-backed Rashida Tariq on a turnout of about 52%.
With the PTI, the Pakistan Peoples Party and Jamaat-e-Islami all sitting out the by-poll, the PMML, which had entered the race with Qazi Ibrahim in September, became the only serious challenger and openly courted PTI and PPP voters while the ruling party leaned on the Virk family name. That vacuum is what allowed the chief minister to cast the result as a defeat for a combined opposition.
Some 30,000 votes in a central Punjab constituency on a fifth of the usual turnout marks the PMML’s strongest electoral showing to date, and explains why both sides are fighting over the narrative long after polling closed.
A rehearsal for February
The stakes extend beyond one National Assembly seat. Punjab goes to the polls for its first local government elections since 2015 on Feb 7, and the PMML has been among the loudest voices pressing the ECP for a firm date.
Sindhu said the PMML had built public support through welfare and public-service work, an apparent reference to campaigns such as its pledge of 25 district rescue centres, and accused the PML-N leadership of attacking opponents instead of addressing public concerns.
For Lahore’s political class, the question now is whether the “banned” label becomes a formal case before the ECP, as Bokhari has urged, or a test of defamation in court, as Sindhu has threatened. Either route would put the legal status of the PMML under scrutiny just as ward-level campaigning across Punjab begins.
Sindhu closed with an appeal to the chief minister not to put the interests of the state at risk for political gain, saying politics should be conducted with dignity and character rather than through accusations.
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