LAHORE: Punjab Assembly session has kicked off to elect the House’s speaker and deputy speaker.
The second session of the newly-elected provincial assembly, presided over by outgoing Speaker Sibtain Khan, started after a delay of one-and-a-half hours on Saturday.
At the outset of the delayed session, members of the House chanted slogans against each other.
Later, four MPAs, including Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leader Chaudhry Shafay Hussain and Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) Hafiz Farhat and Nawabzada Waseem Badozai, who were not present in the House’s inaugural session on Friday, took their oaths.
The sworn-in MPAs then marked their attendance in the register after the oath, following which the session was briefly adjourned for 20 minutes for the Maghrib prayer.
Yesterday’s session marked the beginning of PML-N’s chief minister nominee Maryam Nawaz’s parliamentary politics, as 321 out of 371 elected members took oath as the new MPAs.
Out of these 321 legislators, 221 belonged to the PML-N its allied parties, 98 members of the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) and one each of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and PML-Zia.
Today, elections for the speaker and deputy speaker are being held via a secret ballot under Rules 9 and 10 of the Rules of Procedure of the Provincial Assembly of Punjab, 1997.
PML-N’s Malik Ahmad Khan and Malik Zaheer Iqbal Channer submitted their nomination papers for the slot of Punjab Assembly speaker and deputy speaker, respectively.
Meanwhile, SIC members Ahmad Khan Bhachar and Muhammad Moeenuddin Riaz Qureshi submitted their papers for the speaker and deputy speaker positions.
It may be noted that PML-N has become the largest party in the Punjab Assembly after the induction of 13 MPA-elects from PPP, 10 from PML-Q and five from the Tehreek-e-Istehkam Party.
Having the majority, PML-N has announced to form the government in the province with Maryam as its head.