Top 30 politicians join Imran Khan team

A total of thirty political notables joined the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) of Imran Khan, giving a boost to its electoral prospects.They also included former federal and provincial legislators and retired bureaucrats.Another principal political rival of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in the Multan politics, Sikandar Bosan, figures in a sizable cluster of stray but ambitious political animals, wandering in the political wilderness, and retired bureaucrats, looking for electoral niches, who have now joined the PTI. Bosan turned out to be the second chief opponent of Gilani after Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who has jumped on the PTI bandwagon. However, unlike Qureshi he is unexpected to get anything near the second most important position in the party with the prospects of clinching the first position one day.Bosan contested against Gilani in the 2008 general elections. As per the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), he, as PML-Q nominee, secured 45,765 votes in NA-151 Multan compared to Gilani’s tally of 77,664 whereas PML-N candidate Malik Majid Bucha had bagged 18,413 votes. He is going to be the PTI candidate against Gilani in the next parliamentary polls. Like his most political colleagues, who have switched over to the PTI, Bosan was also federal minister (food, agriculture and livestock) in Musharraf’s era.Except three new entrants — Jehangir Tareen, Awais Leghari and his brother Jamal Leghari — all others, having electoral background, were defeated in the last polls, some in successive elections.However, among them Ishaq Khakwani lost with a small margin in NA-168 Vehari constituency.Ghulam Sarwar Khan also faced defeat in the contest to NA-53 Rawalpindi in the last polls at the hands of the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, with a big margin.Tareen had won with a big margin from NA-195 Rahimyar Khan by obtaining 84,577 votes in 2008 while his closest rival Makhdoom Amaduddin had got 46,056 votes.