Peshawar: The oath-taking of new 25 MPAs on reserved seats has paved the way for Senate elections for 11 seats that will be held at the provincial assembly today.
With the induction of new 25 MPAs elected on reseves seats the K-P Assembly now finally stands fully constituted almost one and a half years after the February 8, 2024 general elections.
The Upper house contest includes 7 general seats, along with 2 seats each for women and technocrats, for which a total of 16 candidates are in the running.
The Senate elections, being conducted under the supervision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), will allow each MPA to cast three votes.
One of the ballot papers — the white one — will be for general seats. The green ballot paper will be for technocrat seats and the pink ballot paper will be for women seats
To win one of the 7 general seats, a candidate will need 19 votes. For the 4 seats reserved for women and technocrats, each candidate will require 49 votes to be successful.
The government and the opposition, through mutual consultation, have jointly fielded 11 candidates — 6 backed by the government and 5 by the opposition. In addition, five other candidates from the PTI are also contesting independently.
The K-P Assembly could not be fully constituted after the last year’s elections due to a controversy over reserved seats, on which the ruling party of the province, the PTI, laid claim. The PTI, however, lost the legal battle for reserved seats on June 28.
Later, on orders of the Supreme Court, ECP distributed the reserved seats for women and minority members among opposition parties — the PML-N, the PPP, the JUI-F, the ANP and the PTI-P.
The PTI government and opposition have agreed to jointly field candidates against one disgruntled PTI nominee.
Under the agreement, six seats will go to the government and five to the opposition.
A total of 145 provincial lawmakers will cast their votes in the election.
The PTI-backed Senate candidates on general seats include Murad Saeed, Faisal Javed, Mirza Muhammad Afridi and Noorul Haq Qadri. For the technocrat and women’s seats, the party has named Muhammad Azam Khan Swati and Rubina Naz as its candidates, respectively.
The opposition-backed candidates include Attaul Haq of JUI-F, Muhammad Talha of PPP, Niaz Ahmad of PML-N on general seats, whereas Dilawar Khan of JUI-F is in the run for the technocrat seat, while the PPP has nominated Rubina Khalid for the women’s seat.
Based on the late-night reports, among the ‘disgruntled’ PTI members, Waqas Orakzai, Irfan Saleem, Irshad Hussain and Ayisha Bano had already exited the race, leaving Khurram Zeeshan in the race.
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