Pakistan: In big blow to Sharifs, opposition candidate Elahi takes charge as Punjab CM
Hours after the Pakistan Supreme Court stuck down a disputed ruling, opposition PML-Q leader Chaudhry Parvez Elahi took charge as the new chief minister of Punjab. Pakistan’s apex court on Tuesday had annulled a Punjab assembly deputy speaker decision, and named Elahi as the chief minister of the politically crucial province, in a major setback to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Elahi, who lost the election held on Friday despite getting a majority vote, challenged the ruling of deputy speaker Dost Mazari who handed victory to Hamza, son of Prime Minister Sharif.
A three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justices Ijazul Ahsan and Munib Akhtar, which heard the case, ruled that Pervez Elahi is the chief minister of Punjab province.
It initially seemed like Hamza had managed to retain the post of Punjab province chief minister by the barest of margins after Mazari rejected 10 votes of his rival candidate Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi’s party Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q), an ally of ousted prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), citing Article 63-A of the Constitution.
In the 368-member Punjab Assembly, Hamza’s party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) received 179 votes, while Elahi’s party garnered 176 votes.
Ten votes of Elahi’s PML-Q were not counted on the pretext that they had violated the orders of their party chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. Mazari said that as party chief Hussain’s instruction to PML-Q members to vote for Hamza instead of Elahi held greater sway.
