The National Assembly Secretariat has announced that the election will be held for the position of the Leader of the House on Sunday (March 3) and the candidates could submit their papers till Saturday, 2PM.
Shehbaz Sharif is nominee of the PML-N for the position of the prime minister while Omer Ayub Khan is backed by the PTI which is in alliance with the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) that had no seats of itself but plenty of independents who were nominated by the symbol-less party.
The inaugural session of the National Assembly was held today in which 302 members took oath. The house is incomplete since the Election Commission of Pakistan yet to decide on the allocation of reserved seats for the SIC.
Prominent political figures who took the oath included PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, former premier Shehbaz Sharif, ex-president Asif Ali Zardari, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, and JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
Three Senate members, Nuzhat Sadiq, Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, and Yousuf Raza Gilani, resigned from the upper house to join the National Assembly.
The session concluded with the announcement that elections for the NA speaker and deputy speaker would be held the following day.
PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif made a noteworthy return to Parliament after seven years, having resigned as premier following his disqualification in 2017.
The session witnessed a moment of tension when PTI’s Omer Ayub Khan voiced concerns about the incomplete representation in the house, particularly the absence of PTI-backed women lawmakers in jail.
