PESHAWAR: Thirteen members of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Thursday demanded of Governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra to ask Chief Minister Pervez Khattak to seek fresh vote of confidence from the assembly for losing majority.

MPAs Qurban Ali, Javaid Naseem, Amjad Afridi, Naseem Hayat, Ubaidullah Mayar, Abdul Haq, Ziaullah Afridi and Wajihuz Zaman told a joint news conference at the house of PTI MPA Yaseen Khalil here that 13 members of the provincial assembly had jointly sent a letter to the governor requesting him to ask the chief minister under Article 130 (7) of the Constitution to get fresh vote of confidence from the assembly as he’s lost majority in the house and has no right to remain in power.

They said the CM was unable to face the criticism of the lawmakers and therefore, the assembly’s session was postponed.

The MPAs said the ruling PTI’s chairman, Imran Khan, was morally bound to produce whatever evidence he had about his claim regarding the involvement of 20 lawmakers in the horse-trading in the recent Senate elections.

They declared Imran Khan’s claim about having the horse-trading video recording as ‘totally baseless’ and asked the PTI chief to hand over the ‘evidence’ to the National Accountability Bureau for probe.

The lawmakers said Islam didn’t allow its followers to level allegations against innocent people.

They said if the PTI chief had any concrete evidence against them, then he should make the evidence public instead of giving them show cause notices.

The MPAs said the PTI chief was no longer sadiq and ameen for leveling baseless allegations against 20 lawmakers.

They said the PTI chief would be taken to the court if he failed to prove those charges.

The MPAs said Rs700 million was spent on the establishment of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission but it had failed to recover a single penny from corrupt people.

They said if inquiries were initiated against the provincial government, the people would forget the corruption of PPP leader Asif Zardari and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif.

The lawmakers claimed that the PTI leadership was going to clear six MPAs of the horse-trading charges as they’d replied to the show cause notices issued in that respect.

They asked the ruling PTI not to present the provincial budget for the next fiscal year and said the current government should announce the ‘administrative budget’ for four months only.

The lawmakers said it was ironic that the PTI leaders were trying to teach morality to others on one hand but they violated ethical values on the other by supporting the rival Pakistan People’s Party’s nominee for the Senate deputy chairmanship.

Meanwhile, Awami National Party parliamentary leader Sardar Hussain Babak also wrote a letter to the governor requesting him to ask the CM to seek a fresh vote of confidence from the assembly, claiming Pervez Khattak has lost the support of the majority of MPAs in the house.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2018