• Ruling party bags NA seats in Lahore, D.G. Khan, Sahiwal, Faisalabad; candidates lead other contests in Faisalabad, Haripur as per initial, unofficial results

• PPP wins one Punjab seat; five go to PML-N, with latter’s lead in PP-98 race

• ECP chief downplays low participation, says voters not interested due to low stakes

• PTI alleges rigging in Lahore and Haripur; boycotts all other contests

LAHORE / HARIPUR / ISLAMABAD: After polls closed in by-elections across 13 constituencies — for six national and seven provincial assembly seats — in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the ruling PML-N bagged almost all seats, except for one in Muzzafargarh, which was secured by the PPP, unofficial results showed in the early hours of Monday morning.

The PML-N was also leading the polls in three other constituencies: two national and provincial seats in Faisalabad and one NA seat in Haripur, where the unofficial results had not been announced till the filing of this report.

The six NA constituencies where polling was conducted included NA-18 (Haripur), NA-96 and NA-104 (Faisalabad), NA-129 (Lahore), NA-143 (Sahiwal) and NA-185 (Dera Ghazi Khan). The seven Punjab Assembly constituencies up for grabs included PP-73 (Sargodha), PP-87 (Mianwali), PP-98, PP-115, PP-116 (Faisalabad), PP-203 (Sahiwal), and PP-269 (Muzaffargarh).

Amid an opposition boycott and low voter turnout, the by-polls were held in response to the disqualification of a number of PTI lawmakers following their conviction in May 9 violence cases. The main opposition PTI, however, stayed away from the electoral exercise, save for two National Assembly constituencies in Lahore and Haripur. The PML-N fielded its candidates on all seats except in Muzaffargarh, and the PPP contested on two NA and one Punjab seat.

By Sunday night, the PML-N was in a position to win all the Punjab seats, except for PP-269, where the ruling party had not fielded a candidate against PPP’s Alamdar Qureshi.

According to Form-47 issued after midnight, PML-N candidate Mahmood Qadir Khan defeated PPP’s Dost Mohammad Khosa by securing 82,419 votes against his rival’s 49,226 votes in NA-185. In Lahore’s NA-129, Mohammad Nauman of the PML-N emerged victorious with 63,441 votes while independent Arslan Ahmad got 29,099 votes.

The ruling party also bagged the Sahiwal NA-143 seat, as its candidate secured 119,334 votes as per the unofficial results. Even before the Form-47 was issued, PM Shehbaz Sharif had congratulated Tufail Jutt, saying, “Undoubtedly, with the victory in NA-143, the public has expressed its trust in the spirit of public service of the PML-N.” In a tweet, he also congratulated the Lahore and Sahiwal provincial assembly candidates.

In NA-104, PML-N’s Danyal Ahmad bagged 52,791 votes against independent candidate Rana Adnan Javed’s 19,262 votes.

In NA-96, PML-N’s Mohammad Bilal Badar secured 61,808 votes while independent candidate Nawab Sher Waseer secured 29,805 votes, according to results from 247 out of 345 polling stations.

On the other hand, the PTI claimed to have secured a lead in Haripur, citing results from 341 polling stations. PTI insiders claimed that their candidates bagged 102,136 against Babar Nawaz’s tally of 78,066 votes, citing results from 341 polling stations.

However, by the time this report went to press, results from 292 out of 602 polling stations had been shared by the ECP on its media dashboard, showing PML-N candidate Babar Nawaz ahead with 81,655 votes against Shehrnaz Ayub’s 56,981 votes.

Punjab Assembly seats

PML-N candidate Muhammad Hanif secured 45,073 votes against independent nominee Falak Sher’s 10,670 in PP-203. In PP-87, PML-N’s Ali Haider Noor Khan Niazi bagged 67,986 votes while runner-up Mohammad Ayaz Niazi got 6,371 votes. In PP-115, PML-N candidate Tahir Pervaiz got 49,046 votes while his rival could not secure more than 2,000 votes. In PP-116, PML-N candidate Ahmad Shehryar received 48,824 votes while Asghar Ali got 11,429 votes, as per Form-47. In PP-73, PML-N’s Sultan Ali Ranjha got 71,770 votes and emerged victorious.

In PP-269, PPP nominee Alamdar Abbas Qureshi secured 55,868 votes while Iqbal Khan bagged 46,510 votes.

In PP-98, PML-N’s Azad Ali Tabassum secured 29,227 votes while his rival Muhammad Ajmal got 20,472 votes, according to results received from 104 out of 171 polling stations.

‘Robust turnout’

Earlier while speaking to journalists in Islamabad on Sunday evening, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar was confident that the PML-N would secure a clear lead in the by-elections, evident by the “robust turnout”.

Mr Tarar said the PML-N candidate enjoyed a strong position in Lahore, with party teams actively involved throughout the polling process. He said voter turnout for the party had been highly encouraging across Lahore, Faisalabad, Sahiwal and Dera Ghazi Khan.

He said the PTI’s decision to boycott the exercise would have political repercussions for the opposition party. “Political boycotts carry inevitable cost as there is no room for such decisions in democratic practice,” he said in reference to the opposition party. He claimed that by-elections witnessed a robust voter turnout, with citizens from across social and economic divides stepping forward to exercise their democratic right.

“In Lahore, unusually large crowds gathered at polling camps, while Dera Ghazi Khan reported a steady flow of voters throughout the day. Elderly citizens, young people and women turned out in significant numbers, reflecting broad public participation in the electoral process,” he said.

Low turnout

In most constituencies, however, the voter turnout remained quite low.

The disinterest could be gauged from the fact that one polling station in NA-96 (Faisalabad) did not see a single voter for hours after polling opened. Meanwhile, announcements were made through the loudspeakers of local mosques both in Faisalabad and Sahiwal, urging people to come out of their homes and exercise their right to franchise as a national duty.

Similarly, a video clip of Faisalabad City Police Officer Bilal Omer’s visit to multiple polling stations also showed barely any voters present, with cops filling the venue instead. Similarly, workers at the camps of PML-N’s Tabbasum and independent candidates Wasim Akram Chattha and Haji Ajmal Cheema at a government school polling station reported “almost no voters” at around 12pm in PP-98.

Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja, however, justified the low turnout, saying these elections were not supposed to change the “number game” in parliament, which was the reason for the lack of enthusiasm.

Speaking to reporters at the ECP monitoring room in Islamabad, he said the election remained peaceful in both provinces and thanked the provincial governments for their cooperation. “This election was not supposed to change the numbers game in parliament. This is the reason why the turnout was low in today’s elections,” he added.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency President Ahmed Bilal Mehboob posted on social media platform X that if the ruling PML-N managed to win five NA seats in these by-polls, “it will not need PPP votes for a simple majority in [the] NA in future, or in other words, PML-N can stay in power without PPP’s support!”

Rigging allegations

Earlier, PTI leader Hammad Azhar alleged that ballot books are being received by the presiding officers less than the number of books issued to them in the by-polls for NA-129 (Lahore-XIII).

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he shared Form-36 (packing invoice containing the quantity of ballot paper books) of polling station No. 330 in NA-129, which said that 18 ballot paper books, from serial No.5179 to 7194 and each containing 100 ballots, had been issued. But the presiding officer encircled the number 18 and wrote with her pen the number 15 and signed the form.

The ballot books were meant for a female polling station for 1,716 voters.

The spokesperson for the ECP declined to comment, while an official attributed the discrepancy to a typographic error as the number of ballot books issued to the polling station (330) was 15 as confirmed by the serial number — from 5179-5194 — mentioned in the next column of the Form-36.

Separately, Punjab Assembly Opposition Leader Moeen Riaz Qureshi accused the authorities of “uprooting almost 99 per cent” of the PTI’s camps outside polling stations in Lahore. Mr Qureshi pointed out the low voter turnout and claimed that the PML-N attempted to “sabotage the by-polls by distributing more than half of the polling stations’ lists” in other areas, resulting in voters heading to the wrong polling stations. The PTI also claimed that Central Punjab Youth Wing President Mian Hassan Shakeel and others were injured by PML-N workers at a polling station in NA-129.

Similarly, former KP minister Yusuf Ayub accused the ECP of being biased against their candidate Shehrnaz Omar Ayub. “The election commission’s biased approach is evident from the posting of presiding officers, other polling staff, and changing our election symbol,” he said. He acknowledged that the voter turnout remained low but expressed the hope that, despite all the bias, the PTI candidate would win the election with a margin of 100,000 votes.

PTI’s Faisalabad president Adil Pervez Gujjar also served a show cause notice on Deputy Coordinator Women Wing Azra Parveen for contesting the by-polls from NA-96 against party policy.

Tariq Saeed from Toba Tek Singh, Shafiq Butt from Sahiwal, Tariq Birmany from D.G. Khan, Sajjad Niazi from Sargodha and Khursheed Anwar from Mianwali also contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2025