ISLAMABAD: The opposition jirga is expected to meet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after his return from the UK to persuade him to resume talks with the protesting Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and form an independent commission to investigate the alleged rigging in last year’s elections.

“We are in close contact with leaders of the ruling PML-N and they have assured us that the prime minister will meet the jirga after his return,” Senator Rehman Malik, who is a member of the jirga, told Dawn on Thursday.

He said the government should immediately form the commission.

Otherwise, he added, the jirga was considering an option to request the Supreme Court to constitute the commission on its own.

“If the Supreme Court can form a commission on memo scandal, then why not on rigging in the elections?” he asked.

But retired justice Tariq Mehmood said that under a law of 1956, only the government could form any such commission, and not the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court could form such commission if there was a pending petition, he said, adding that the memo commission had been constituted on a pending petition.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2014