True to their word: Zulfiqar Khosa to come back as a Senator, not an MPA

‘He won from PP-243 DG Khan and had expected a senior cabinet position or the governorship’.

LAHORE:

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has decided not to include Senator Sirdar Zulfiqar Khan Khosa in the provincial cabinet or nominate him for governor. Instead, the party has told him to contest elections for a Senate seat.

According to party members privy to the developments, Khosa’s request to be included in the Punjab cabinet or to be given the Punjab governorship was “politely turned down” because Nawaz Sharif had given his word to Khosa’s rival Leghari group in DG Khan – when they joined the PML-N – to ‘restrict’ Khosa to the Senate.

Khosa had contested the elections, while occupying a Senate seat, and won a provincial assembly seat from DG Khan, PP-243. According to Article 223 sub clause 4 of the Constitution, if a member of either house of parliament or of a provincial assembly becomes a candidate for a second seat which in accordance with clause (1), he may not hold concurrently with his first seat, then his first seat shall become vacant as soon as he is elected to the second seat. Under the rule Khosa’s Senate seat became vacant as soon as he was elected to the provincial assembly.

Khosa, said the officials, had contested elections from the DG Khan constituency even though the PML-N had decided earlier not to award tickets to any sitting Senators. Senators Zafarullah Khan Dhandla from Bhakkar and Chaudhry Jaffar Iqbal from Rahim Yar Khan also wanted to contest the elections but were not given tickets under the policy.

Party officials, who spoke to The Express Tribune, on condition of anonymity, said that Khosa had approached both Sharif brothers to ask that he be made a senior minister in the Punjab cabinet or the governor but both his requests were turned down. He was asked to contest Senate elections from the seat he had vacated, they said.

Zulfiqar Khosa has yet to take oath and did not cast his vote when the speaker and deputy speaker of the Punjab Assembly were elected. He was conspicuous by his absence when the chief minister was elected.



Khosa was close to the Sharif brothers during their last term in the Punjab, from 2008 to 2013. He was a senior adviser to Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister, and was in charge of the chief minister’s office located at 90 The Mall.

The relationship became strained in 2012 after Khosa opposed his first cousin Sardar Amjad Khan Khosa’s joining the PML-N, but Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and MNA Rana Tanveer were able to convince the Sharifs to overlook Zulfiqar Khosa’s objections. Later, his son Dost Muhammad Khosa spoke against Shahbaz Sharif, which made matters worse. Right before the election his son Saifuddin Khan Khosa joined the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). He is also said to have resisted the joining of Leghari group.

Zulfiqar Khosa could not be contacted for his comment.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 16^th, 2013.