ISLAMABAD, Dec 20: The Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) has expressed its concern over the delay in appointment of opposition leaders in the National Assembly and the Senate, and claims to have the required majority in both the houses to get the offices.

Talking to Dawn here on Saturday, a senior ARD office-bearer accused the government of intentionally delaying the appointment of the opposition leaders in order to create a rift in the combined opposition.

He said the ARD and the MMA leaders had been stating for the past one year that they were not interested in getting the office of the opposition leader without first resolving the LFO crisis. However, he added, when the things were being settled down between the government and the MMA, it was the time to appoint ARD nominees as opposition leaders in both the houses.

Giving justification for the claim, he said the ARD had already submitted a list of 78 MNAs to the speaker supporting Makhdoom Amin Fahim’s candidature for the opposition leader’s slot in the National Assembly. It was the duty of the speaker to assess the majority in the house and nominate the opposition leader, he stressed.

Unlike the past, he said, the speaker asked the opposition parliamentary groups to submit signed lists of members so that he could assess the strength.

Despite the fact that the speaker had introduced a wrong tradition, he added, the two major opposition alliances submitted the lists of their respective members. He said there was no justification for the Speaker, Chaudhry Amir Hussain, to further delay nomination of the opposition leader in the National Assembly.

In the Senate, he said, the ARD and the MMA had equal number of seats before the death of Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani.

However, after Maulana Noorani’s sad demise, the ARD had become a majority party in the Senate with 22 seats.

He claimed that the situation would remain the same even after the by-election as there were chances that the seat would go either to the ruling PML-Q or the MQM.