The Punjab Assembly’s speaker election is now being held
Following a one and a half-hour delay, the Punjab Assembly session to choose the House’s speaker and deputy speaker began on Saturday. The protests both inside and outside the legislature prevented the meeting from starting on time.
During the second meeting of the recently elected provincial assembly, which was chaired by Speaker Sibtain Khan, there were chants directed at each other by members of the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
To guarantee that law and order was maintained during the assembly session, a large police presence as well as jail vans were stationed outside the building.
Later, six MPAs took an oath of office. These included independent candidates Rai Murtaza Iqbal Khan, Fateh Khaliq, and Tashakul Abbas Warraich, as well as leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) Chaudhry Shafay Hussain and the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), Hafiz Farhat Abbas and Waseem Khan Badozai.
After taking the oath, the sworn-in MPAs recorded their attendance in the register. Thereafter, the meeting was momentarily adjourned for twenty minutes to accommodate the Maghrib prayer.
As soon as the assembly session resumed, voting for the next speaker began.
As per Rules 9 and 10 of the Punjab Provincial Assembly’s 1997 Rules of Procedure, a secret ballot will be used to elect the speaker and deputy speaker today.
Malik Zaheer Iqbal Channer of the PML-N and Malik Ahmad Khan of the PML-N presented their nomination papers for the positions of deputy speaker and speaker of the Punjab Assembly, respectively.
In the meantime, Ahmad Khan Bhachar and Muhammad Moeenuddin Riaz Qureshi, who are members of the SIC, sent in their papers to be the speaker and deputy speaker, respectively.
Rana Aftab, the leader of the SIC, called the Punjab Assembly “incomplete” earlier in the session and promised to fight any action taken by the House in court.
The leader of the SIC took the floor in the provincial parliament and stated that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has not yet determined who will fill the 27 allocated seats for women and minorities.
Mian Aslam, the PTI’s nominee for Punjab’s chief minister position, is not present in the House. He will run against us in the chief ministerial election, he continued.
At this point, the departing speaker stated that he was unable to direct the election regulator to call the absentees to the assembly, which might necessitate calling a break in the session.
“I’m going out on a decent note from the chair [speaker’s post]. He remarked, “I don’t want to be known as the person who constantly called sessions to an end.
According to Sibtain, there are 30 seats in the province legislature, comprising three minority and 27 reserved seats.
According to him, one party would have to petition the high court and the other the Supreme Court during the next six months if the ECP does not make a decision regarding the seats that have not yet been notified.
In response to Aftab’s comments, Malik Muhammad Ahmad, the PML-N candidate for speaker of the house, stated that the individuals the SIC leader was referring to are not members of the House.
The PML-N leader emphasized the need to have elections for the positions of speaker and deputy speaker, citing Article 254 of the Constitution.
Maryam Nawaz, the PML-N’s choice for chief minister, began her parliamentary career yesterday as 321 of the 371 elected members took the oath of office to become the new MPAs.
Two-hundred and one lawmaker each from the PML-N and its allies, the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), and PML-Zia comprised the remaining 321 parliamentarians.
It should be mentioned that with the entrance of 13 MPA-elects from the PPP, 10 from PML-Q, and 5 from the Tehreek-e-Istehkam Party, PML-N has grown to become the largest party in the Punjab Assembly.
With the majority, the PML-N has declared that Maryam will lead the new administration in the province.
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