Pildat president, Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, has analysed whether elected independent candidates can join to form a parliamentary group of a party that doesn’t exist in the National Assembly and claim a share in the reserved seats for women and minorities.

He took the case study of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) after the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, stating that after the 2019 KP elections for 16 general seats allocated to erstwhile Fata districts, three independent MPAs decided to join the BAP — a party which didn’t exist in the provincial assembly before.

He continued, “Based on the strength of three out of 16, BAP was allocated one of the four seats reserved for women. This was despite the fact that BAP had not submitted a priority list of its candidates against reserved women seats.”

However, he added that the party had an election symbol and was on the “right side of the power”.

“Sad that PTI has decided to defer its intra-party election and thus the quest for a symbol and reserved seats,” he said.