Sindh assembly: New assembly to meet today for first session

Election for speaker and deputy speaker may also be held today.

KARACHI: Despite elections pending on a few seats in the province, the 14th Sindh assembly will hold its first meeting today.

Speaker Nisar Ahmed Khuhro will administer the oath to the newly elected members before the elections for the new speaker and deputy speaker. Though the assembly secretariat has not finalised their agenda of the day, acting secretary GM Umar Farooq told The Express Tribune that the nomination forms to elect the speaker and the deputy speaker will be issued around 2pm and will have to be submitted within the next hour.

Meanwhile, the scrutiny of the papers will be completed by 4pm and a final list of the candidates contesting the two slots will be displayed at around 5 pm. “The election of the speaker and the deputy speaker may be held on Wednesday,” he said.

Farooq explained that once the speaker is elected, the legislators will proceed to elect the leader of the house - the chief minister - most likely on May 30 or May 31. “Each party will have a right to nominate their candidate. The election may be held within two days of the nomination.”



Out of the total 168 seats in the provincial assembly, 130 seats are allocated for those who come through the general election, while 29 are reserved for women and nine for minorities.

According to the notification issued by the election commission, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has received around 67 seats, followed by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement with its 37 seats. The third in line is the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional with seven seats, followed by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz with four seats, National Peoples Party with two, Thatta’s Shirazi group with four, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf with three and one seat by an independent candidate, Syed Abdul Nabi Shah.

New faces

This time around, 50 members of the assembly will be new faces. Some of them have experience of local politics and the bureaucracy and have served as nazims in the local government system, but this will be their first time in parliamentary politics.

From the PPP, Owais Muzaffar - who contested the elections from Thatta - is one such candidate. Apart from him, Dr Bahadur Khan Dahri from Nawabshah, Mir Mumtaz Hussain Khan from Jacobabad, Nawab Ghaibi Sardar Khan Chandio from Qamber-Shahdadkot, Jam Khan Shoro from Hyderabad and other will also grace the house for the first time.

PML-F candidates Saeed Khan Nizamani from Sanghar, Syed Muhammad Rashid Shah from the Khairpur Mirs and Faraz Dero from Sanghar are among the new comers, along with NPP candidate Ghulam Rasool Khan Jatoi.

The MQM also has its fair share of new faces from Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur. The three PTI candidates debuting today are Gul Sher Zaman, Samar Ali Khan and Syed Hafeezuddin, along with PML-N’s Muhammad Aslam Abro from Jacobabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2013.