ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Parliament lower house will vote for a new prime minister on Sunday. The National Assembly secretariat on Thursday issued a schedule for the election of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, according to which election will be held on March 3 (Sunday).
As outlined in the schedule, aspiring candidates can obtain their nomination papers until 2:00 pm on March 2 (Saturday), with scrutiny of the nomination papers to be completed by 3:00 pm on the same day.
On the day of the Prime Ministerial election, the National Assembly will focus solely on this agenda, setting aside other matters.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has nominated Shehbaz Sharif, while the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-Sunni Ittehad Council (PTI-SIC) alliance has put forward Omar Ayub for the Prime Minister’s position. To secure victory, a candidate must garner at least 169 votes.
With 108 seats, PML-N holds the largest number of seats in the National Assembly, followed by the PTI-SIC alliance with 81 seats. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), an ally of PML-N, holds the third position with 68 seats.
The National Assembly, with a total of 366 seats including 60 reserved for women and 10 for minorities, has adjusted its seat count following the merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
The election for the Prime Minister will follow the appointment of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker on March 1 (Friday).
Earlier, during the inaugural session of the National Assembly, newly elected MNAs took their oaths from outgoing Speaker Raja Parvez Ashraf.
Earlier today, PTI’s Barrister Gohar, while addressing the inaugural session of the national assembly, raised concerns about the legitimacy of the speaker, deputy speaker, and prime minister elections in the absence of certain members on the reserved seats. He urged the Speaker to postpone the election of house representatives until seats were allocated to the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC).
It is pertinent to mention here that the ECP has withheld the notification of 25 out of 70 reserved seats. The ECP has notified 38 out of 60 women seats in the house, and the poll body’s decision on whether to allot the remaining 22 seats to the SIC remains pending. Similarly, seven out of 10 non-Muslim seats in the National Assembly have been allotted, and the ECP’s decision on the remaining three seats for SIC candidates is pending.
These 70 reserved seats are in the 336-member assembly allocated to parliamentary parties in proportion to their representation in the assembly. Similarly, reserved seats in the four provincial legislatures are distributed among parliamentary parties based on their numerical strength in the respective houses.
Under the allocation formula, each reserved seat in the National Assembly corresponds to 4.8 members. Applying this formula, the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), with 92 members in the National Assembly, is expected to receive approximately all the remaining women’s and minorities’ seats.
