LAHORE, July 30: Opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly is most likely to be notified before the eighth session of the house convened on Aug 6, as provincial authorities have agreed to give the slot to Chaudhry Zaheeruddin, a Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid MPA from Faisalabad.

“The PML-N high command has agreed 99 per cent to accept Zaheeruddin as the opposition leader in the provincial assembly,” a member of the Punjab cabinet told Dawn here on Wednesday.

The issue has been lingering on since the election of the leader of the house (chief minister) in April 12 session of the assembly. It delayed the formation of standing committees because only the opposition leader can nominate opposition members for these committees.

Since April 12, Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal is withholding notification of the opposition leader, arguing that after the emergence of a forward bloc in the PML-Q he needed to ascertain that leader of which group enjoyed trust of most opposition members.

Over the last few months, the opposition had been demanding issuance of the notification and continuously boycotting house proceedings, contending that the house was incomplete without the opposition leader.

Some leaders of the PPP, a coalition partner in Punjab, have also called for notification of the opposition leader so that standing committees can be formed and their colleagues, who could not be accommodated in the provincial cabinet, are made heads of these committees.

Their frustration was obvious during the budget session when some of them pointed that opposition leaders open debate on budgets everywhere in the democratic world, but the tradition was not being followed in Punjab. Sources said that PML-N high-ups were made to realise that Zaheeruddin, a relative of speaker Rana Iqbal, was not a shrewd person and thus he would not create any problems for the treasury. The leadership was told that preference to any other person to Zaheeruddin would not be an advisable act.