PESHAWAR - The first round of talks between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s ministerial committee and tripartite opposition parties’ alliance ended without any consensus.
The decision to constitute a ministerial committee consisting of KP Local Government Minister Inayatullah Khan, Health Minister Shahram Khan Tarakai, Education Minister Atif Khan and Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani was taken at an All Parties Conference (APC) held with CM Pervez Khattak in the chair. However, the opposition parties-ANP, PML-N, PPP and JUI-F boycotted it.
The opposition has alleged that PTI led government was involved in rigging in last local government elections held on May 30 across the province. The government formed committee was tasked to hold talks with the opposition parties.
In this regard, the four members ministerial committee visited Bacha Khan Markaz soon after concluding the APC, where it held a meeting with opposition parties and prominent among them were ANP’s Mian Iftikhar Hussian, PPP’s Najmudin Khan and Rahimd Dad Khan, JUI-F’s Ghulam Ali and Jalil Jan and others.
The ministerial committee formally asked opposition parties to call off the shutter down strike call for today (Wednesday) across the province. Besides, the committee assured that the provincial government would accept all the demands, which included re-elections and probing into rigging in the LG polls.
However, the opposition refused calling off shutter down strike against the alleged rigging during the recently held local bodies elections in the province.
Moreover, the three-party alliance boycotted the APC and insisting that government must resign.
On this occasion, the ANP’s Mian Iftikhar Hussain said that there would be a peaceful protest against rigging. “Our demand remains unchanged. The government should step down, arrange a caretaker set up and hold re-election,” he said.
Talking to media Provincial Minister Inayatullah Khan said that they talked with the opposition parties in a pleasant situation and it was the beauty of democracy and added that talks would continue with opposition parties in future.