ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Parliament’s lower house is set to elect a new prime minister on Sunday, according to a schedule issued by the National Assembly secretariat on Thursday.
Candidates aspiring for the position can obtain their nomination papers until 2:00 pm on Saturday, with scrutiny of the nominations to be completed by 3:00 pm on the same day.
The election for Prime Minister will be the sole agenda of the National Assembly on Sunday, with all other matters set aside.
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. To secure victory, a candidate must obtain at least 169 votes.
The PML-N holds the largest number of seats in the National Assembly with 108 seats, followed by the PTI-SIC alliance with 81 seats. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) 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 Prime Minister will follow the appointment of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker on Friday.
During the inaugural session of the National Assembly, newly elected MNAs took their oaths from outgoing Speaker Raja Parvez Ashraf.
PTI’s Barrister Gohar, addressing the inaugural session, 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).
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.
