ISLAMABAD: All eyes are on Peshawar where Senate elections are scheduled on 11 seats of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa today (Monday) —as the air of uncertainty surrounding the fate of these polls finally cleared with the involvement of Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Sunday.
The elections are taking place on seven general seats, two seats reserved for women and two seats reserved for technocrats/religious scholars.
The reported efforts on part of the government and opposition in KP Assembly to reach a compromise to get the related candidates elected on the respective seats are said to have failed to yield the desired results.
11 KP seats: SC decision paves way for Senate elections
Reports suggested that five Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidates; Irfan Saleem, Waqas Aurakzai, Irshad Hussain, Khurram Zeeshan and Ayesha Bano refused to accept the instructions of their party leadership to withdraw in favour of the respective candidates. These candidates are contesting today’s Senate elections, a scenario that has reportedly mounted problems for Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur’s provincial government of PTI.
The 11 Senate seats from KP were lying vacant since March last year after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) did not hold elections on these seats over its row with speaker KPA on reserved seats oath issue.
On 2 April, last year, just when the Senate elections were scheduled, the ECP issued an allegedly controversial order to postpone the Senate elections on 11 KP seats citing the oath non-administering controversy, and a related PHC in this regard. Originally, polling was scheduled on 48 Senate seats, comprising of 12 seats each of Punjab and Sindh, 11 seats each of KP and Balochistan, and two seats of Islamabad.
But, with the unopposed election of senators on 11 seats of Balochistan and seven seats of Punjab, and the polls’ postponement on 11 KP seats, the Senate elections were finally held on only 19 seats on 2 April 2024.
Apart from that, election on a Senate woman seat from KP, that fell vacant following the resignation of Sania Nishtar from PTI, would be held on 31 July. On Sunday, the ECP wrote another letter, the second one in less than a week, to registrar PHC with the request to chief justice PHC to nominate a person for administering oath to the lawmakers-elect of the KP Assembly on the reserved seats.
The ECP wrote a similar letter to the PHC registrar on 16 July. The CJ PHC nominated Governor KP Faisal Karim Kundi to administer the oath. The governor administered oath to 25 lawmakers in Peshawar in the evening on Sunday.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025