Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is preparing for the 2018 general elections and has announced the constitution of parliamentary boards in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for awarding party tickets. This was stated by PTI Central Information Secretary Shafqat Mehmood in an exclusive chat with this correspondent. "We have not demanded early elections yet but have started our preparations and announced the constitution of parliamentary boards for two province; boards for Balochistan and Sindh would be announced later," he added.
Ticket-awarding board for Punjab comprised 10 members, including party chairman Imran Khan, vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi, secretary general Jehangir Khan Tareen, secretary information Shafqat Mehmood, MNA Asad Umar, presidents of all four regions in Punjab, including Amir Kiyani (North), Aleem Khan (Central), Rai Hassan Nawaz (West), Ishaq Khadwani (South), and Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar.
The 11-member parliamentary board for KP consists of Imran Khan, Qureshi, Tareen, Umar, KP Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, Speaker KP Assembly Asad Qaiser, additional secretary general Atif Khan, head of Peshawar region Shah Farman, head of Hazara region Zar Gul Khan, head of Malakand region Mehmood Khan and president south region KP Ali Ameen Gandapur.
Mehmood said the parliamentary boards would receive applications from candidates seeking PTI tickets to contest the next general elections and finalise them. A senior PTI leader told Business Recorder that the party was also undertaking a survey to get public opinion on its short listed candidates in some constituencies; while for districts and other constituencies in Punjab, the party had commissioned a survey by an independent private company to get public opinion about the reputation of its local leaders who are expected to be the party's candidates. He said the private company did not involve local leaders in the exercise.
Another senior PTI leader said the party was working concurrently on strengthening its ranks in central Punjab - a region it considers will be a real battlefield in 2018 general elections. In the recent past, the party has focused on some 19 districts of central Punjab consisting of 94 National Assembly constituencies. According to a senior leader privy to the developments, the party aims at grabbing the maximum number of seats from this region where the PTI performed very poorly in 2013: out of 94 NA seats, it managed to win only two, PML-N made a clean sweep by clinching 91 seats and PML-Q grabbed only one.
In some of the constituencies the party has completed a 'scientific survey' defined as a popularity check of political leaders representing a specific constituency. For example, a survey carried out in Sialkot (NA-11) showed that former PPP minister Firdous Ashiq Awan's popularity stood at 95 percent - that is 95 percent of people supported the idea of Awan representing the PTI in that constituency.