Senior journalist, Syed Bukhar Shah of the Progressive Panel has been elected president of Peshawar Press Club (PPC) while Zafar Iqbal elected as general secretary. Aneela Shaheen made a record by electing as first woman elected as vice president of the club. Polling for electing new office-bearers for Peshawar Press Club were held under the supervision of five-member election committee with senior journalist, Zulfikar Ali Shah as chairman, with Said Alam Khan, Sultan Siddiqui, Shehzad Anjum and Bilal Ahmad were other members of the committee.
In past Syed Bukhar Shah, who has started his journalist carrier from the daily, The Frontier Post in 80's is now associated with the Daily The News International has been president of the club for four terms and once as chairman of the club for a brief period. The polling begun at 9:00am and continued till 4:00pm and later the votes were counted in the presence of the agents of the candidate. The results were announced late on Saturday night.
For the first time in the history of the PPC four panels contested the elections and carried out a hectic campaign. Besides, Progressive Panel other panels were included Democratic Panel, Journalist Forum and Journalists' Unity of the mostly young journalists. PPC has 429 members. In the quadruple contest, Syed Bukhar Shah obtained 159 votes while his closest rival was Dr Yousaf Ali of the Democratic Panel who secured 103 votes. The two other presidential candidates Arif Yousafzai of the Journalists' Forum and Irfan Musazai of Journalists' Unity settled down at 88 and 33 votes respectively.
For office of the vice president, Anila Shaheen of the Democratic Panel trounced Faqir Hussain of the Progressive Panel by obtaining 135 votes against his 106 votes. The two other candidates Zeeshan Anwar and Abdul Baseer Qalandar secured 76 and 59 votes respectively.
Similarly, for the post of general secretary, Zafar Iqbal, the candidate of Democratic Panel obtained 127 votes against Ammad Waheed of the Progressive Panel, who secured 124 votes while Sardar Faizan Hussain of the Journalists' Forum and Taimur Khan of the Journalists' Unity obtained 62 and 34 votes respectively while a fifth independent candidate, Rahmat Khan secured 29.