Daily Times

LAHORE: To settle a disagreement on the name of the next Punjab caretaker chief minister, Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Iqbal Khan on Monday formally constituted a parliamentary committee that will take a final decision within three days.

The committee is comprised of three members each from both the treasury and the opposition and in case of failure to finalise the caretaker chief minister’s name, the matter would be forwarded to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that will announce its decision within the next two days.

From the government side, Rana Sanaullah Khan, Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan and Khawaja Imran Nazir while from the opposition side, Mian Mahmoodur Rasheed, Sibtain Khan and Shoaib Siddiqui are included in the committee.

The Parliamentary Committee would consider four given names for the post of interim chief minister in which two names each ae placed from the government and the opposition. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government had given the name of Admiral (r) Muhammad Zakaullah and Justice (r) Muhammad Sair Ali while the opposition has given names of Professor Hassan Askari Rizvi and Ayaz Amir.

According to the notification issued by the Punjab Assembly speaker, the committee may make rules for regulating its procedure. Parliamentary sources told Daily Times that the meeting among the committee members would be held tomorrow (Wednesday) for final consideration of the name.

Interestingly, the sources told this scribe that the chances of reaching on any final name from both the opposition and the government sides were thin and the ECP should decide the matter.

It is worth mentioning that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has already withdrawn its initial proposed name of former Punjab chief secretary Nasir Khosa for the same seat claiming some reservations of the general public and inside the party. According to PTI sources, their party bigwigs have serious doubts on Nasir Khosa’s impartiality as he was once a blue-eyed bureaucrat of the Sharif family in the recent era.

Published in Daily Times, June 5^th 2018.