RAWALPINDI: Despite the passage of 20 days, the Election Commission of Pakistan has not notified the vacant seat of the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) vice president.

The seat fell vacant after the vice president Raja Jahandad Khan was voted out by his own party’s members on June 27.

When contacted, RCB spokesman Qaiser Mehmood said that the RCB had sent a summary to the ministry of defence which had forwarded it to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for the notification. The ECP should have denotified the seat within two or three days after the receipt of the summary.

He said that after the notification, the election commission would announce the election schedule of the new vice president of the board, and the voting would be held after 60 days of the notification of the vacant seat.

On the other hand, the PML-N who had won all the 10 seats of Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) in cantonment boards election could not finalise a new candidate for the vice president.

This has not only hampered the development work in cantonment areas but also delayed the approval of the property assessment committees by the board.

“The board meeting cannot be called until the post of the vice president is filled,” said a senior official of the RCB.

He said the building plans and other works would be approved directly by the board president without consulting the elected members.

A party leader told Dawn that the party’s local leaders were divided on the candidate as they wanted to bring their like-minded person on the seat of the vice president.

He said the process would take a month or two.

The leader said the PML-N was being run in the cantonment areas by the local MNA Malik Abrar and Senator Chaudhry Tanveer Khan and the PML-N Rawalpindi chapter president Sardar Naseem had nothing to do with its affairs.

He said the party’s local leader from city areas wanted to be consulted in this matter but the lawmakers did not give them space.

He said four candidates, Malik Munir, Rasheed Khan, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed and Haji Zafar Iqbal, had appeared on the scene.

The leader on the condition of anonymity said that the party local leaders would recommend the name of the vice president to the provincial leadership who would finalise the name.

However, another local leader said that PML-N Punjab chapter would finalise the name of the vice president after formation of local governments in city areas.

He said if the local leaders could not reach consensus, the provincial leadership would bring a new face.

He said the final decision with regard to the candidate would be made by the party instead of the local leaders.

Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2016