Senate shocker forces PM to seek vote of confidence.

ISLAMABAD -- In a major upset, Opposition parties' joint candidate, Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani, defeated government's nominee Abdul Hafeez Shaikh in a close and crucial contest for the Senate slot here in the National Assembly on Wednesday.

An eleven-party alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), had fielded PPP leader and former PM Gillani to make a 'surprise' amid rising political temperature.

Except the major upset at one of the general seats in the federal capital, the PTI-led ruling alliance secured 28 seats out of 48 vacant seats in the election for the Senate. While the opposition parties including PPP, PML-N, JUI, ANP and BNP got 20 seats.

According to the unofficial results, the PDM's joint candidate and former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani bagged unexpected 169 votes while the government's candidate and Abdul Hafeez Shaikh got a total of 164 votes.

Seven votes for the general seat from Islamabad were rejected out of which one vote belonged to federal minister and PTI leader Shehryar Khan Afridi who allegedly by mistake signed the ballot paper which led to wastage of his vote. He later requested the ECP to allow him recasting but he was not permitted.

Meanwhile, the women seat from Islamabad went to the ruling party as PTI's Fozia Arshad collected 174 votes while defeating the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Farzana Kausar who got a total of 161 votes.

On the other hand, the ruling party is on the lead in the province of Baluchistan where the government and its allies won seven seats out of 12 including four general seats, one woman seat, one technocrat and one minority. The opposition meanwhile bagged five seats including two general seats, one women's seat and one technocrat seat.

It must be noted that out of the seven general seats won by the government and its alliances in Balochistan four were supported by the government, two from the Opposition and one was independent candidate; Abdul Qadir was backed jointly by the BAP and PTI.

The candidate of Awami National Party (ANP) in Baluchistan Assembly, Arbab Muhammad Umar Farooq, ruling party's Ahmed Kakar, Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti and Prince Ahmed Umar Ahmed were elected for general seats.

On general seat from Balochistan Assembly, JUI's Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri and BNP's Muhammad Qasim were elected with the support of the parties. The joint candidate of the government on women's seat in Balochistan, BAP's candidate Samina Mumtaz won the seat. Meanwhile...