Presenting PESHAWAR:
Following orders from their respective provincial leadership, the district organizations of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the Awami National Party (ANP), and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) have begun redistributing seats in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
On Wednesday, the PPP, ANP, and JUI-F came to a preliminary agreement over the reallocation of seats in K-P for the upcoming general elections. They acknowledged each other’s entitlement to field candidates in the seats that they had already won.
A political understanding was laid at the Bacha Khan Center in Peshawar during a meeting between the parties. Syed Masoom Shah, Khadim Hussain, and Senator Haji Hidayatullah were the ANP representatives present at the meeting.
Also present at the meetings were Malik Tehmash, Misbahuddin, Amjad Afridi, Karamatullah Chagharmati, Mahir Ali Shah, the former provincial president of the PPP, and the previous speaker of the K-P.
Abdul Jalil Jan, a spokesman for the JUI-F, stated on Friday that the party’s leadership had reached an agreement on the shift of seats in the general election. As a next step, the three groups’ district organizations have been instructed to work together to secure seats in the national and provincial assemblies for their respective districts.
“Please review the proposed changes to the provincial assembly seats and submit them for approval to the provincial leadership. We will prepare the necessary formula to ensure its approval and subsequent announcement,” the representative said the district organizations.
According to Jan, “this work has been handed over to the district organizations so that they can complete their respective tasks on their own” because the provincial leadership of the three parties did not wish to force any decision on the district organizations.
Nevertheless, he did say that the provincial leadership of the three parties would have to accept the seat modification before it could be officially publicized, and that this would only be done after taking the districts’ situations into account.
The three parties reached an agreement on the seat adjustment, he added, and the district organizations have received these recommendations to consider them when making judgments.
The parties agreed at Wednesday’s meeting to retain the constituencies in which they were either the 2018 election winners or the runner-ups. “All three parties would retain their seats they won in the 2018 elections,” a source added, after verifying the meeting’s conclusion.
The source informed us that the seats that were not won by ANP, PPP, or JUI-F would be given to the party that came in second. Regarding the remaining seats, we will reach out to Quami Watan Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.
