LAHORE  -  A total of 21 candidates have been allowed to contest elections for 12 Senate seats from Punjab after scrutiny of nomination pa­pers. Twenty-eight candidates had filed nomination papers with Provincial Election Commission­er Punjab Aijaz Anwar Chohan, who also served as the returning officer for the Senate Election, for 12 Senate seats including seven general, two reserved for women, two for technocrats/ulema, and one reserved for non-Muslims, from Punjab.

As per the lists of qualified and rejected candidates, issued by the provincial election com­missioner on Wednesday, the nomination papers of 21 can­didates were accepted, while papers of seven candidates were rejected. The nomination papers of 12 candidates were accepted for the seven general seats after scrutiny. The candi­dates are: Walid Iqbal, Shahzad Waseem, Muhammad Tallal Ba­dar, Ejaz Hussain Minhas, Syed Mohsin Raza Naqvi, Ahad Khan Cheema, Pervaiz Rashid, Nasir Mehmood, Hamid Khan, Raja Nasir Abbas, Musadik Masood Malik, and Omar Sarfraz Cheema. For the two techno­crat seats, Muhammad Aurang­zeb, Mustafa Ramday, Yasmin Rashid, and Musadik Masood Malik were allowed to contest.

Faiza Ahmad, Anusha Rehm­an Ahmad Khan, and Bushra Anjum Butt were allowed to contest the two women-re­served seats. For the one minor­ity seat, the nomination papers of Asif Ashiq and Khalil Tahir were declared valid.

Meanwhile, the nomination papers of seven candidates were rejected for the Senate elections. The nomination papers of Mian Najeeb-ud-Din Awaisi, Irfan Ah­mad Khan Daha, Sayed Zulifkar Abbas Bukhari, and Khawaja Habib-ur-Rehman were rejected for general seats. The nomina­tion papers of Surriya Naseem and Sanam Javed Khan were re­jected for women-reserved seats, whereas the nomination papers of Tariq Javed were rejected for the minority seat. Polling for the 12 Senate seats from Punjab will be held on April 2 in the provin­cial assembly. According to the schedule, issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan, the last date for filing appeals against the decisions of the RO about accep­tance/rejection of nomination papers would be March 21.