LAHORE, Feb 18: The Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam) supports the demand for reserving seats for minorities in the National as well as Provincial Assemblies, Mian Muhammad Azhar, the party chief, said here on Monday.

Speaking at a seminar organized by the Minorities Wing of the party on Joint Electorate and Its Effect on Minorities, Mian Azhar said he was convinced that minority candidates could not win general seats in the October 2002, elections. For the time being, he said, seats should be reserved for them.

He announced that his party would nominate a permanent minority member on its Central Working Committee. He said provincial office-bearers would be consulted in this regard.

Gohar Ayub Khan, the PML(QA) secretary general, criticized the university degree requirement for candidates introduced in the reform package announced recently. He said it would deprive minorities and women in smaller provinces of adequate representation.

He said if the condition was meant to ascertain that all the members could actively participate in legislation, only the lawyers should be allowed to contest the polls. If it was meant, on the other hand, to disallow certain politicians, a better course was to disqualify all those who had been candidates since 1985.

He suggested that the PTV should hire news readers and anchor persons from minority communities.

Arshad Lodhi, the Punjab organization secretary-general, said the party tickets would go to “good workers.”

Earlier, some speakers belonging to minority communities criticized the introduction of joint electorate, saying the system had deprived them of representation in 1962 and 1970.

They said that the government had allocated seats for 70,000 technocrats but ignored millions of citizens in minority communities. They demanded reservation of five percent seats for the minorities.