LAHORE, May 25: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has decided to field Javed Hashmi as its candidate for the prime minister’s slot.

Imran Khan, the party’s chief, will be its parliamentary leader in the National Assembly while Dr Arif Alvi will be its chief whip in the house.

The decisions were taken at a meeting of the party’s parliamentary committee, chaired by Mr Khan at his residence here on Saturday.

Briefing reporters on the decisions, the party’s vice chairman, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said Sheharyar Afridi from Kohat and Munaza Hassan, the party’s women wing president, would be fielded for the slots of National Assembly speaker and deputy speaker.

He said MNA-elect Ghulam Sarwar Khan would represent the PTI in the assembly’s Business Advisory Committee.

The committee decided that the party’s secretary general Pervaiz Khattak would be the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Asad Qaiser speaker of the provincial assembly.

The meeting was attended by MNAs-elect Javed Hashmi, Arif Alvi, Shafqat Mehmood, Ghulam Sarwar Khan, Amjad Ali Khan, Hamidul Haq, Murad Saeed as well as Shirin Mazari, Munaza Hassan, Nafisa Khattak, Robina Farid and Lal Chand Mali.

Mr Qureshi said the meeting had developed a consensus that the PTI would play an effective and responsible role as an opposition party in the National Assembly.

The PTI vice chairman said Mr Khan had lauded the party’s workers and supporters for their participation in peaceful protests against rigging.

He (Imran) said the party would not open a Pandora’s box by rejecting the outcome of the elections, but the Election Commission of Pakistan should investigate the complaints of rigging.

Mr Khan asserted that the truth would prevail if the ECP investigating the matter in only six constituencies.

“The PTI is not questioning the validity of the entire elections, it is asking the authority concerned to investigate the complaints in order to fix the problems so that such anomalies do not surface again in by-elections as well as local government elections,” Mr Qureshi quoted Mr Khan as saying.

The committee said the number of election tribunals was not sufficient to entertain the large number of complaints.

It demanded that the ECP should increase the number of tribunals so that complaints could be disposed of at the earliest.

Mr Qureshi said the party’s candidate had won after re-count in Haripur but the ECP was not notifying the results, thus aggravating doubts about its credibility.

He said the ECP had conceded rigging in NA 230 and announced re-poll in 43 polling stations on June 1. He demanded that the re-polling should be held under the supervision of Rangers and troops, as had been the case in NA 250.

He said the decision about vacating seats by candidates who had won from more than one constituency would be taken later.

He said Mr Khan would not be able to attend the first session of the National Assembly because he had been advised by doctors to take complete rest. The PTI chief was recovering fast and would stay in Lahore for now, he said.