PPP's Qadir Khan Mandokhail emerges victorious in NA-249 Karachi by-election

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has emerged victorious in the NA-249 by-election in Karachi held on Thursday.

According to provisional results released early on Friday, PPP's Qadir Khan Mandokhail emerged victorious by bagging 16,156 votes. Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz's Miftah Ismail came in second with 15,473 votes.

Moreover, the recently banned Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan's candidate Mufti Nazeer Ahmed Kamalvi secured 11,125 votes and came third. During the 2018 elections, TLP candidate Abid Hussain had also received the third-largest share of votes.

The participation of the proscribed TLP in the upcoming by-polls had become unclear after the federal government formally banned the party on April 15. However, the TLP was listed on the ballot papers for the by-polls.

While Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's Amjad Afridi secured 8,922 votes and Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal bagged 9,227 votes.

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto took to his Twitter handle and wrote, "Thank you Karachi #NA249."

Moreover, PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz claimed that the election was stolen by only a few hundred votes, and urged the ECP to withhold the results. "Even if it doesn’t, this victory will be temporary and will come back to the PML-N soon," she tweeted.

The voting process began on Thursday in which there were 339,591 registered voters, out of which 201,656 were male and 137,935 were female voters. However, only 73, 471 people cast their votes, Samaa reported.