Dr Saveera Parkash must have known that she could secure her place in history. If everything goes well, she will be Pakistan’s first Hindu woman to contest Parliamentary Elections from Buner District of conservative Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. If elected or nominated, this young medical practitioner would become a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan.

Saveera’s father, Om Parkash, too, is a doctor-turned-politician. He is an active member of centre-left Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). As the South Asian nation is all set to hold Parliamentary Polls on February 8, 2024, Saveera filed her nomination papers on December 23, 2023 to contest elections from Buner’s PK-25 constituency.

Multiple leaders of the same political outfit can submit nominations for a particular seat in the General Elections of Pakistan. When the top leadership of the party chooses one as the final candidate, the rest withdraw their nominations. Saveera has expressed hope that the PPP leadership would eventually select her as the final candidate. There are three types of seats in the Pak National Assembly… General seats, seats reserved for women, and seats reserved for the minority communities (Hindus, Christians, Persians, Sikhs, etc.). The party that captures the maximum number of general seats gets the maximum number of reserved seats. Parties can nominate their preferred candidates for reserved seats, sending them to the National Assembly. According to Saveera, senior PPP leaders recently told her father that she would contest from a general seat. However, sources close to the PPP has hinted that the party may send Saveera to the National Assembly on a reserved seat, if another strong candidate wins elections from that conservative constituency.

Talking to media, local social activist Imran Naushad Khan has said that no female candidate has contested elections in Buner District in the last 55 years, and that Saveera would be the first one. Despite being a Hindu, she has filed nomination for the PK-25 that is an entirely Muslim-dominated constituency.

Meanwhile, Saveera has claimed that she is following the footsteps of her father who has always served humanity. Although she pursued a Medical Degree from Abbottabad International Medical College in 2022, Saveera has been serving as the General Secretary of the PPP’s women’s organisation in Buner for a long time. The PPP leader has informed a Pakistani daily that she, while studying medical science, witnessed the plight of poor people and their helplessness in state-run hospitals very closely. She has also seen how women have been deprived and neglected of the benefits of continuous development, and how efforts have been made to stifle them. Hence, her aim is to serve the poor people in her locality, if elected. Saveera has made clear that she would work towards making the world safer for women, apart from ensuring their rights. She would also make an attempt to hit the very root of patriarchy. Citing her own example, Saveera stressed: “It has taken 55 years for a woman to contest elections since Buner became a part of Pakistan!“

In a separate development, the Pakistani media have reported that former Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif would contest in the upcoming Parliamentary Elections. The chief of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML(N) returned to Islamabad in October 2023 after four years of self-imposed exile in London. The PML(N) recently confirmed that Nawaz would be its Prime Ministerial candidate in 2024.

In 2017, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered the removal of Sharif from his office in multiple corruption cases, including the Panama Papers. Next year, the longest-serving Prime Minister of Pakistan (a total of more than nine years across three tenures) was sentenced to 10 years and seven years in prison as per the orders of the court. Sharif was in voluntary exile in London since that period of time. Initially, he went to London on bail for six weeks for treatment of heart-related issues. The court declared him a fugitive when he decided to stay in London even after the expiry of the bail period.

Upon his arrival in Pakistan in October 2023, Sharif appealed against the sentence given to him in court. The Islamabad High Court acquitted him from all the charges on December 12, 2023. Then, the PML(N) confirmed that Nawaz would be the Prime Ministerial candidate of the party.

The Election Commission accepted Sharif’s nomination for the 2024 elections on December 28, weeks after the court overturned two graft convictions against him. However, Sharif still requires the removal of a life ban on holding any public office in order to qualify to contest in the election. Hence, it is still not clear how the Election Commission accepted his nomination. A hearing on the ban will be held in January 2024. It may be noted that Sharif was banned from running in elections by the Supreme Court in 2017, with the court declaring him dishonest for not disclosing income from a company owned by his son.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das