The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) suffered some serious setbacks in the by-elections on Sunday, which marked the second major political showdown after the July 25 general election.
In Lahore, the PTI lost its seat to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which had put forth Khawaja Saad Rafique as its candidate against the ruling party's Humayun Akhtar. The NA-131 constituency was previously won by the now-Prime Minister Imran Khan.
In Bannu, another seat that Khan had vacated, the victor was the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam's (JUI) Zahid Durrani, with whom the PML-N had allied itself against the PTI.
Further, the NA-56 seat, bagged earlier by the PTI, was won by the PML-N's Malik Sohail Khan.
Jhelum, the seat vacated by Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry, the PML-N's Nasir Mahmood emerged the victor with 60,492 votes.
The Sharif brothers' party was also leading in the national and provincial seats from Faisalabad, where the PTI had earlier "sweeped". The election there, in two of the constituencies, were postponed due to the candidates passing away.
The PTI also lost to the PML-N in Dera Ghazi Khan, which is the hometown of Usman Buzdar, the incumbent chief minister of Punjab, and where Sardar Awais Laghari of the latter party toppled Sardar Maqsood Laghari of the former.
The PTI also lost its Multan seat to Qasim Abbas Khan, an independent.
As for PK-3 and PK-7, the two seats in Swat that the PTI had won in the July 25 general election, the PML-N's Sardar Khan and the Awami National Party (ANP), respectively, won. Swat is the hometown of Mahmood Khan, the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
