ISLAMABAD: The election committee of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Thursday announced that the General Council (GC) meeting of the party would be held in Islamabad on Oct 18 to elect the central office-bearers for the next four-year term.

Announcing the election schedule as head of the five-member election committee, party’s former secretary general Chaudhry Jaffar Iqbal told reporters that nomination papers could be submitted to the committee by 4pm on Oct 17, and withdrawn anytime before the meeting of the GC which would start at 11am at the Convention Centre.

Mr Iqbal said that over 2,000 GC members were expected to elect the central office-bearers, including the president and the general secretary. He, however, said that under the party’s constitution, the PML-N president had the powers to make nominations to some of the offices.

In reply to a question, he admitted that the party had failed to meet the constitutional requirement of convening regular meetings of its Central Working Committee (CWC) and holding of elections after expiry of the term of the previous executive body last year.

Mr Iqbal said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as party president had explained to the members of the CWC at the Oct 10 meeting about the causes and reasons for the delay.

He said since the country was passing through special circumstances because of the ongoing war on terrorism, the party failed to hold regular meetings.

He expressed the hope that the CWC meetings would now be held on a regular basis.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2016