Daily Times

The coalition candidate for the office of prime minister, PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif, and the PTI nominee for the post, Omar Ayub, submitted their nomination papers on Saturday.

Leaders of coalition parties including Khawaja Asif, Khurshid Shah, Attaullah Tarar and Tariq Bashir Cheema were present to submit Shehbaz’s papers.

For PTI, party leaders Asad Qaiser, Aamir Dogar, Ali Muhammad, and Barrister Gohar Khan were in attendance to submit Ayub’s nomination papers.

The nomination papers for the two candidates were received by Secretary-General National Assembly Tahir Hussain. The scrutiny of nomination papers will be completed by 3pm today (Saturday). The election for the PM would be conducted through the division of members in the house.

As per the Constitution, before the voting process begins for the slot of prime minister, bells will ring for five minutes inside the Parliament House to inform every member – in case they are not present in the chamber at the moment – to gather inside. Once the process begins, the doors will be locked, and no one will be allowed to enter or leave the hall till the PM’s election is concluded.

For example, if there are two candidates, the speaker will say that ‘whoever wants to vote for candidate A can go to lobby A’ and ‘whoever wants to vote for candidate B, can go to lobby B’.

If there are three candidates then there can be a lobby C as well.

At the entrance of the said lobbies, a member of the assembly secretariat staff will record the name of every member of the National Assembly in the register.

The whole process will be open and people sitting in the galleries will be able to see who votes for whom. The political parties have to vote collectively and every member has to vote for the candidate that their party is voting for.

Section 91(4) of the Constitution states, “The Prime Minister shall be elected by the votes of the majority of the total membership of the National Assembly: Provided that, if no member secures such a majority in the first poll, a second poll shall be held between the members who secure the two highest numbers of votes in the first poll and the member who secures a majority of votes of the members present and voting shall be declared to have been elected as Prime Minister:

Provided further that, if the number of votes secured by two or more members securing the highest number of votes is equal, further poll shall be held between them until one of them secures a majority of votes of the members present and voting.”