PESHAWAR: As Senate polls in Khyber Pakhtun­khwa hit a snag over a dispute on the oath-taking of opposition MPAs elected on reserved seats, KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur on Tuesday said the provincial government would not let these lawmakers take oath, since the reserved seats in question belonged to the PTI.

Those 25 lawmakers — 21 elected on seats reserved for women and four on those meant for non-Muslims —awaited the administration of oaths by Speaker Babar Saleem Swati to participate in the Senate polls, on Tuesday.

They had secured these seats after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) denied the PTI a share in the reserved seats in the national and provincial assemblies and allocated the same to other parliamentary parties.

Earlier in the day, ECP staff had reached the assembly hall at 8am, while the election material had been transported to the assembly a day earlier. Polling, however, was not held.

“The ECP has illegally denied awarding share to the PTI-SIC [alliance] of reserved seats and allocated our share to the opposition parties,” he said while speaking to the media on the premises of KP Assembly.

The 25 seats reserved for women and non-Muslim lawmakers were the PTI’s right, he said, adding that the political party would not backtrack from its commitments.

He questioned under which law the ECP gave a share of the PTI seats to the opposition parties in the assembly. “The ECP is constantly violating the Constitution; first it deprived the PTI of its symbol ‘bat’ in elections and then handed over its reserved seats to the opposition in the KP Assembly.”

Earlier, KP Assembly Opposition Leader Dr Ibadu­llah told media persons that it was “very strange that provincial government does not follow any law, constitution and institutions rather it follows the directives of a prisoner (Imran Khan)”.

He said that the opposition wanted to run the affairs of this province according to the law but the provincial government had no intention to do this.

Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2024