ISLAMABAD - In a significant development, the lower house of the parliament yesterday updated the parliamentary party position removing the PTI as parliamentary political faction from the National Assembly.
The notification issued by the National Assembly secretariat excluded the controversial reserved seats. Now the number of members in the National Assembly is 313 without the 23 reserved seats. The new party position was notified as Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq other day (Thursday) had written a letter to the top election regulatory authority regarding the recently approved ‘Election Amendment Act’. According to the party position, 80 PTI members are shown as the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) members. Earlier, 39 members were recognized as PTI and 41 as independents following the apex court order. The court had concluded, in its interim order, that ECP has recognized PTI as a political party and MNAs who filed party ticket before the February 8 polls should be considered as PTI members.
According to the new party position, issued on Friday, PML-N has 110 seats, Sunni Ittehad Council 80 seats, PPP 69 seats, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM-P) 22 seats, JUI-F eight seats, Independents 08 seats, Pakistan Muslim League-Q 05 seats, Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party (IPP) 04 seats, and Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMap), Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP), Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM) have one seat each.
The electoral watchdog has held at least three meetings this week without reaching any conclusion. As the electoral body deliberated the matter, it received on Thursday a letter from the National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq, who said the SC judgment must be implemented in view of the amendment made to the Election Act 2017.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Syed Shibli Faraz on Friday took a jibe at the ruling coalition in the centre and said it was seeking alms by allegedly trying to snatch the party’s share of reserved seats in the parliament.
Speaking at a press conference here, Leader of Opposition in the Senate Shibli said his party PTI had the right to get reserved seats according to its proportionate strength in the national and provincial assemblies following the July 12 ruling of the Supreme Court.
“It is shameful that Speaker National Assembly (Sardar Ayaz Sadiq) also wants charity (of reserved seats),” he said referring to a recent letter of the speaker written to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), requesting not to implement of the SC ruling that held PTI eligible for reserved seats.
It is the primary duty of the speaker NA to uphold respect and sovereignty of the parliament to which he has failed, the opposition leader said. He recalled that the speaker failed to fulfill its duty when the police had arrested PTI MNAs from the premises of Parliament House on September 10.
Senator Shibli underlined that the majority of the people had voted in favour of PTI in the February 8 elections irrespective of the fact that its iconic election symbol ‘bat’ was snatched from the party. Now PTI has the right to get the reserved seats according to strength, he added.
“If someone wants to get alms in the form of reserved seats, it would have to prove whether it was deserving for his,” he said, pointing fingers at the coalition government. He alleged that a bankrupt government deserved charity because it seized powers by using the shoulders of others.
“There is a law of jungle in the country as the government has been disrespecting the judgments of the Supreme Court by not implanting them,” the PTI leader said, adding that some law and rules would have to be followed in the allocation of reserved seats.
He also lashed out at Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for supporting the controversial constitutional package, which is aimed at disturbing the balance of power between the judiciary, the parliament and the executive. He taunted him by saying that Bilawal Bhutto was trying to hit hard on the soul of the unanimous constitution, “with an ax”, which was given by his grandfather and former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to the nation.