PESHAWAR: Three main opposition parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa joined hands on Monday to contest the upcoming local government elections in the province jointly.
The decision was taken in a joint meeting of the three parties -- Awami National Party, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl and Pakistan People’s Party -- held here with Mian Iftikhar Hussain of ANP in the chair.
Syed Aqil Shah, Advocate Khushdil Khan, Advocate Sadruddin Marwat and Malik Ghulam Mustafa of ANP; Rahimdad Khan, Hamayun Khan, Faisal Karim Kundi, Najmuddin Khan of PPP and Maulana Attaur Rehman, Haji Ghulam Ali, Asif Iqbal Daudzai, Abdul Jalil Jan and Maulana Amanat Shah of JUI-F attended the meeting.
The meeting after detailed discussion decided that all three political parties would participate in the upcoming local government elections as an alliance and would filed joint candidates.
The meeting also decided that the tri-party alliance would direct its respective district organisations for holding joint meetings to give practical shape to the alliance with mutual consent and adopt procedure for fielding of unanimous candidates.
The participants of the meeting agreed that any member party of the alliance would not hold separate negotiations with any other political party without permission of the other two partner parties.
They said that alliance with any independent group at district level would also require consent of all component parties of the alliance.
The alliance for the local bodies' elections would be made at district level, however, in case of any difficulty the provincial leaders of the member parties would make efforts resolve the problem and remove differences at district level.
During the meeting, the representatives of all three parties demanded of the provincial government to hold early local government elections. They said that they would contest the local government elections on a single symbol if there were no constitutional complications.
They said that they would field joint candidates whether the elections were held on party or non-party base. The meeting also decided that the party concerned would take disciplinary action against its workers if they tried to contest elections against the official candidates of the alliance.
The meeting decided to form a committee for looking after affairs of the alliance. The office-bearers of the committee would be nominated on rotation basis for a period of one month.
The participants of the meeting nominated Mian Iftikhar Hussain chairman of the committee for the current month with Ghulam Ali as vice chairman, Najmuddin Khan as general secretary and Abdul Jalil Jan as information secretary. The agreement regarding the alliance was signed by Mian Iftikhar Hussain, Maulana Attaur Rehman and Rahimdad Khan. — APP