Top politicians suffer shocking defeat in Pak elections

Team Udayavani, Jul 26, 2018, 4:50 PM IST

Islamabad: Former Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, his party president Shehbaz Sharif and chief of the right-wing Jamat-i-Islami Sirajul Haq were among the stalwarts who suffered shocking defeat in the general elections, Pakistani media reported today.

Abbasi, who assumed premiership after the Supreme Court disqualified Nawaz Sharif, had contested from NA-57 parliamentary seat in Rawalpindi, his native constituency of hill resort of Murree, and NA-53 Islamabad, where he lives, as a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate. But according to the unofficial results, the former premier had lost from both the seats.

The NA-57 is considered as one of the safest seat for the PML-N, from where Abbasi’s father had won for the first time in 1985. Abbasi had won this seat in 1990, 1993, 1997, 2008 and 2013 general elections. He had lost only once in 2002.