Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Of the 104 senators, four from Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and 11 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) will retire ahead of the Senate election this March.

From KP, the ruling PTI is likely to bag at least seven seats, increasing its seats in the upper house of the Parliament to 14. However, if opposition parties in KP’s provincial assembly form an alliance they would be in a position to give tough time to the ruling party.

Though the ruling party in the province has not yet finalised names for issuance of party tickets, but interviews with party sources suggest that Azam Swati, Khayal Zaman, Faisal Javed, Latif Afridi and JUI-S chief Samiul Haq are likely candidates from KP.

For FATA, 11 MNAs will elect four senators. According to the procedure, 12 lawmakers from FATA choose senators but NA-38 in Kurram Agency remains vacant because the by-poll has yet to be held in the constituency. Hidayat Ullah, Hilalur Rehman, Malik Najmul Hassan, and Muhammad Saleh Shah are retiring from FATA Senate seats ahead of the election.

Election for Senate seats from FATA are notorious for alleged exchange of large amounts of money to buy loyalties of MNAs from the region. Last year, Senate election for four FATA seats had to be postponed because of a late night presidential ordinance which restricted MNAs from FATA to just one vote instead of four votes.

In total, FATA and KP have a share of eight and 23 seats including one from each province for minorities in the Senate respectively.

Published in Daily Times, February 5^th 2018.