PESHAWAR: KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur said on Tuesday that the provincial government would not allow these lawmakers to take the oath because the reserved seats in question belonged to the PTI, as the Senate polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa encountered a snag due to a disagreement over the opposition MPAs’ taking of the oath.
Speaker Babar Saleem Swati administered oaths to these 25 MPs, 21 of whom were elected on seats designated for women and four of whom were elected on seats intended for non-Muslims, so they may cast ballots in the Senate on Tuesday.
After the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) awarded other parliamentary parties the reserved seats in the national and provincial assemblies, denying the PTI a portion of those seats, they had secured these seats.
The election materials had been delivered to the assembly a day earlier, but ECP personnel had arrived at the venue at 8 a.m. earlier in the day. But there was no polling.
Speaking to the media on the KP Assembly grounds, he declared, “The ECP has illegally denied awarding share to the PTI-SIC [alliance] of reserved seats and allocated our share to the opposition parties.”
He stated that the PTI was entitled to the 25 seats set aside for female and non-Muslim parliamentarians and that the political party would not renege on its pledges.
He asked what legislation the ECP used to award the opposition parties in the legislature a portion of the PTI seats. “The ECP is consistently flouting the Constitution; it first denied the PTI its electoral symbol, the “bat,” and then it gave the opposition party the seats it had reserved in the KP Assembly.”
Dr. Ibadullah, the leader of the opposition in the KP Assembly, had earlier told reporters 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 claimed that although the provincial government had no intention of doing so, the opposition wanted to manage the business of this province in accordance with the law.
