Islamabad:
The ruling coalition has assured a two-thirds majority in the Senate, with the PPP emerging as the largest party, followed by the PTI and the PML-N.
According to Express News, the PPP has assured 26 seats in the upper house; followed by the PTI, which has its own 16 senators and the support of six independent legislators as well.
The PML-N now has 20 seats; BAP has four seats, while the MQM and the ANP have three senators each. The JUI-F now also has a total of 7 senators. The PTI said six of the 11 seats in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Senate, where Senate elections were held on Monday.
A day before, 25 opposition legislators chosen in seats reserved in the KP Assembly took their oaths, not in the provincial legislature, whose session was postponed earlier in the day due to the lack of a quorum, but in the governor’s house.
With the induction of these new MPA, the KP Assembly finally became completely almost a year and a half after the general elections of February 8, 2024. The oath of these MPA also raided the way for the Senate elections for 11 seats that were held in the Provincial Assembly on Monday.
The KP Assembly could not be fully constituted after last year’s elections due to a controversy over the reserved seats, in which the ruling party of the province, the PTI, claimed. However, the PTI lost the legal battle for the seats reserved on June 28.
Later, the Pakistan Electoral Commission (ECP) distributed the seats reserved for women and minority members among the opposition parties: the PML-N, the PPP, the JUI-F, the ANP and the PTI-P.
These MPA, including 21 women and 4 minority members, were scheduled to oath at an assembly session specially requested on Sunday. However, just after the beginning of the session, a ruling member of the party, Shair Ali Afridi, said the lack of a quorum.
The opposition members raised a shock and organized a protest with the newly elected women and the minority representatives surrounding the speaker of the speaker and the songs of singing.
Later, the speaker ordered a staff in the assembly.
Only 25 members were present at home, which led him to order the bells to be stopped for two minutes. However, the required number of members was not fulfilled. Consequently, the speaker postponed the session until July 24, stating that the oath taking ceremony will take place in the next session.
Previously, the PTI parliamentary party held a meeting in which the members of the Government received instructions not to enter the hall and boycott the procedures to avoid the oath taking.
Subsequently, KP’s opposition leader, Dr. Ibadullah Khan, together with opposition members, presented a petition in the Superior Court of Peshawar (PHC), requesting the President of the Supreme Court to nomine an appropriate person under article 255 (2) of the Constitution to administer the oath to the newly elected members.
The ECP also approached the Supreme Court of PHC, asking him to designate a person to administer the oath to the new MPA. The president of the KP court, Syed Muhammad Attique Shah, then authorized the governor of KP, Faisal Karim Kundi, to take the oath.
Later, on Sunday night, a swearing in the governor’s house in Peshawar was held, where Governor Kundi administered the oath to the 25 freshly elected members by virtue of article 65 and article 255 (2) of the Constitution and rule 6 of the KP procedure and the realization of business rules, 1988.
