PESHAWAR: A total of 13 candidates filed nomination papers with the returning officer against two reserved seats for women allocated to Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly from tribal districts.

PTI and BAP have also submitted their priority lists of candidates wherein the former has given three names whereas the latter has mentioned two names of its priority candidates.

If their nomination papers are accepted by the returning officer, then Ayesha Bibi of PTI and Baseerat Khan of BAP will be elected as MPAs on these two reserved seats as their names are on top of the priority list of their respective parties.

The priority list submitted by PTI includes names of Ayesha Bibi, Wafa Wazir and Mahreen Rauf Afridi whereas the list of BAP carries names of Baseerat Khan and Shazia.

PTI, BAP submit priority lists of their candidates

The likely MPA Baseerat Khan belongs to a political family of Mohmand tribal district as her maternal grandfather Haji Dilawar Khan had remained a senator as well as MPA.

Similarly, Baseerat Khan belongs to Khyber tribal district and has presently been residing in Peshawar.

According to the schedule, scrutiny of nomination papers will take place on September 2 whereas September 6 will be last date for filing of appeals against decisions of the returning officer. An appellate tribunal will decide those appeals till September 10 after which revised list of candidates will be made public on September 11.

The last date for withdrawal of nomination papers will be September 12 after which final list of contesting candidates will be released.

ECP earlier announced that the women, who were enlisted in priority list by the said two parties and registered as voters in electoral rolls of ex-Fata, were eligible to file nomination papers only.

Pir Maqbool Ahmad, the provincial election commissioner, is returning officer for filling these seats.

ECP had early this month notified Naeema Kishwar Khan of JUI-F and Anita Mehsud of PTI as elected candidates on two of the four seats reserved for women in the first ever provincial assembly polls in the erstwhile Fata.

Under the Constitution, the members to fill seats reserved for women and non-Muslims shall be elected through proportional representation system of political parties’ lists of candidates on the basis of total number of general seats won by each political party from the province concerned.

In the light of that provision, ECP allocated two reserved seats to PTI and one each to JUI-F and BAP.

However, the two seats remained vacant as PTI had given only name of Anita Mehsud in its priority list, whereas BAP had not submitted any priority list.

Of the 16 general seats, for which polling was held on July 20, the independent candidates had won six seats, PTI five seats, JUI-F three seats and Jamaat-i-Islami and Awami National Party one seat each.

However, two of the independent MPAs- elect joined PTI whereas three of them in a surprising move joined BAP, which had no presence in the politics of this province.

With the joining of independent candidates, PTI was entitled to get two seats reserved for women, whereas JUI-F and BAP got one seat each. The single seat reserved for non-Muslims went to PTI and its candidate Wilson Wazir was declared successful on it.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2019