Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan\u2019s party plans to call a \u201cparallel\u201d Punjab Assembly session to elect the chief minister, speaker and deputy speaker, claiming that newly-elected chief minister Maryam Nawaz was in the House on \u201ca stolen mandate\u201d, a media report said on Tuesday. Maryam, the 50-year-old senior vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, made history by becoming the first-ever woman chief minister of Pakistan\u2019s most populous Punjab province after receiving 220 votes.<\/p>\n
She defeated Rana Aftab of 71-year-old Khan\u2019s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), who received no votes as his party boycotted the election. Former-cricketer-turned-politician Khan\u2019s PTI party made a call for a \u201cparallel\u201d Punjab Assembly on Monday after claiming a strength of 250 members, including reserved seats for women and minorities, the Dawn newspaper reported. To win the chief minister\u2019s election, a candidate needs to win the backing of the majority, which is 187 members in the House that currently has 327 seats.<\/p>\n
Addressing a press conference, PTI\u2019s central leader, Shaukat Basra, claimed that more than half of the elected Punjab Assembly members, including the newly elected chief minister Maryam, were in the House on \u201ca stolen mandate.\u201d He claimed that Maryam was defeated by a PTI-backed candidate, Mehr Sharafat, in Lahore\u2019s PP-159 constituency, according to the report. Asserting that the results were rigged to ensure the new Punjab chief minister\u2019s victory, Basra said that Maryam \u201cwon the election on February 9 instead of February 8.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPML-N leaders used to say they struck a deal with powers that be, but they failed to strike a deal with the people of Pakistan,\u201d he said. \u201cThis rigged election will result in anarchy,\u201d the PTI leader said. Claiming that the establishment was still requesting PTI founder Khan to become prime minister, Basra said, \u201cBut Mr Khan is determined that the establishment should ensure the mandate given by the people of Pakistan to PTI-backed candidates be returned,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Separately, the party criticised Maryam\u2019s election as the chief minister of the politically crucial Punjab province and said all democratic and constitutional norms were trampled to elect her. In a statement, the party\u2019s spokesperson claimed that police \u201cimposed a curfew\u201d outside the assembly to prevent PTI\u2019s members and the nominee for chief minister from entering the assembly. It claimed that the sanctity of the Punjab Assembly was violated by \u201cstealing the public mandate\u201d to bring a \u201cdefeated woman\u201d to power.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said the people of Punjab \u201cwould not tolerate an insult to their mandate\u201d, according to the report. At least 103 lawmakers of the PTI-backed SIC staged a walkout after the SIC nominee for chief minister, Aftab, was not permitted to speak at the point of order. The newly-elected Speaker, Malik Ahmad Khan, eventually moved forward with the proceedings to elect a new leader of the House after efforts to bring back the boycotting lawmakers went in vain. The PML-N clinched both speaker and deputy speaker offices in the Punjab Assembly.<\/p>\n
In a marathon session of the Punjab Assembly on Saturday, the lawmakers elected PML-N leader Malik Ahmad Khan as the custodian of the House and Zaheer Iqbal Channar as his deputy. The PML-N won 137 seats, while independents backed by 71-year-old Khan\u2019s PTI party won 113 in the Punjab Assembly. Separately, 20-odd independents, not PTI-backed, have already joined the PML-N. Punjab is the most populous province of Pakistan, home to 120 million people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan\u2019s party plans to call a \u201cparallel\u201d Punjab Assembly session to elect the chief minister,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":31924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[3400,3401,332,9792,5369,3397,10473],"class_list":["post-31923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-2024-pakistan-elections","tag-imran-khan","tag-pakistan","tag-pakistan-peoples-party-ppp","tag-pakistan-tehreek-e-insaf-pti","tag-pml-n","tag-punjab-assembly"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}