KOHAT: Following an agreement with PTI the JUI-F’s district nazim, Maulana Niaz Mohammad, submitted his resignation to the chief minister on Tuesday and now he would be replaced by a PTI nominee, bringing an end to the uncertain situation at the district council.

Niaz Mohammad has also given assurance to Chief Minister Pervez Khattak that the next nazim would be from PTI. The PTI-JUI-F alliance has approved the name of the incumbent opposition leader in the district council, Naseem Afridi, for the next district nazim.

PML-N’s former senator Abbas Afridi and his brother MPA Amjid Afridi earlier had launched a movement to de-seat the JUI-F nazim following arrival of the prime minister’s grant of Rs200 million for the district council.

MPA Ziaullah Bangash told this scribe that PML-N had announced to end its two years long coalition with JUI-F following turning down of its demand of giving it Rs10 million share from the PM’s grant by the district nazim. Then they started forming a forward bloc with the aim to bring Amjid Afridi’s son, Babar Azeem, as nazim.

However, after several rounds of talks held for a month the PTI and JUI-F joined hands to fail the no-confidence against the nazim on the condition that the district nazim from JUI-F would be replaced by one from PTI. The post of opposition leader would now be given to the JUI-F, Mr Bangash said.

He said that in the 49-member house a minimum of 25 seats were required for changing the district nazim whereas they had got 29.

Answering a question, he said that they would bring a no-confidence motion against PML-N tehsil nazim Malik Taimoor and replace him with the JUI-F candidate. He said that they had got the support of 39 of total 40 members.

He said that now a request would be made to the election commission to announce dates for the nazim elections.

WOMAN KILLED: A woman, 27, was shot dead on Tuesday, allegedly by her cousin for working in an NGO and mingling with male colleagues.

Sources said that Mehboob Alam gunned down his cousin inside her house in Ustarzai after her refusal to quit the job.

Talking to this scribe, a sister of the victim complained that the police were not accepting the case as that of honour killing. A police official told this correspondent that under the law cases involving illicit relations came within the ambit of honour killing, but in the instant case the dispute was over doing job in an NGO.

The official said that a simple murder case under Section 302 of PPC had been registered for further investigations.

Published in Dawn February 8th, 2017