Who is Waseem Qadir, the PTI defector?

Waseem Qadir, an independent candidate in Lahore supported by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and victorious in the general elections on February 8 from the National Assembly’s NA-121 constituency, has announced his affiliation with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

“My name is Waseem Qadir. I was the secretary-general of PTI in Lahore. The first elected member to leave the party after the elections, the former leader of the PTI, declared, “I have gone back to my house.”

Shortly after the PTI came to power in December 2018, Waseem became a member of the party. He is the son of the late Chaudhry Ghulam Qadir, a former PPP MPA. He held the positions of deputy mayor of Ravi Town and MPA for the PML-N from Lahore before to joining the PTI. He had eleven years of PML-N affiliation.

Notably, the 60-year-old politician’s second party was not PTI. Waseem’s allegiance was with the PPP before he joined the PML-N ten years ago. It was on this ticket that his father, Chaudhry Ghulam Qadir, ran in the 1988 and 2002 elections.

Waseem’s father, Chaudhry Ghulam, fought against the martial law imposed by former dictator Ziaul Haq for eleven years. In the 1988 general elections, Benazir Bhutto, the PPP’s then-chairperson, gave him the party ticket, and he was fielded from then-PP-129 where he won, collecting about 25,000 votes and defeating the IJI candidate Nisar Ahmed. During that time, Waseem also actively took part in his father’s campaign, and he eventually settled in Norway. His allegiance remained with the PPP, nevertheless, and in the 2002 general elections, the PPP again fielded his father Ghulam for a National Assembly seat; however, he was defeated by Sardar Ayaz Sadiq of the PML-N.
By 2007, Waseem had established a solid rapport with the PML-N leadership. As a result, Nawaz Sharif and Shehbaz Sharif gave him a ticket from PP-144, the seat that was previously under NA-123 and was being contested by Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, in the February 2008 general elections. With ease, Waseem was elected and held the position of MPA for five years.

He was not given a ticket for the 2013 general elections; instead, Bau Akhter was fielded to fill the seat that Waseem had won in 2008. He held the position of head of the Mines and Minerals Department Punjab for a while, and the party appointed him deputy mayor of Ravi Town following the 2015 Local Government elections. Following a furious verbal altercation in Model Town with the opposition leader from Punjab at the time, Hamza Shahbaz, about the subject of councilor tickets for LG by-polls, Waseem left the PML-N.

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