SHAHDADKOT: Aftab Shahban Mirani of the Pakistan Peoples Party, elected to the National Assembly for the sixth time in Wednesday’s general elections, is among Pakistan’s longest-serving parliamentarians, having fought and won in eight general elections beginning from 1977.

In 1977 and 1988, he won election to the Sindh Assembly and was elected chief minister by the house in 1990. Since then, he has contested seats to the National Assembly on a PPP ticket six times — in 1990, 1993, 1996, 2008, 2013 and 2018. After Benazir Bhutto became prime minister a second time, Mr Mirani served as defence minister from 1993 to 1996.

He has traditionally contested elections from Shikarpur, his home constituency, but this time, on PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s request, Mr Mirani ran for the Qambar-Shahdadkot-I seat and bagged 72,159 votes, twice those obtained by Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal’s Maulana Nasir Mehmood Soomro, who bagged 36,046, according to unofficial results.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2018