PML-Q’s Sajid Ahmed Bhatti was elected ‘unopposed’ chairman of Punjab Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC-II) during the PAC meeting held at the assembly secretariat on Friday.
According to a news outlet, PML-N supported PML-Q in the election as PTI MPA Nawabzada Waseem Khan proposed Bhatti’s name for the slot and PML-N lawmakers Khwaja Salman Rafique and Malik Ahmed Khan seconded it.
Bhatti replaced PTI’s Yawar Abbas Bokhari, a relative of Zulfi Bokhari, a close aide to Prime Minister Imran Khan. Yawar had resigned from this post after he was appointed a provincial minister.
“We wanted to defeat the PTI and we succeeded in it,” Malik Ahmed Khan, who is PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesperson, said.
Talking about PML-N’s stance over its claim to the PAC-I slot, Khan said, “The PAC-I must be given to the opposition leader and we will not rejoin the standing committees of the assembly till our demand is met”.
Around 100 PML-N lawmakers had resigned from the standing committees of the Punjab Assembly in protest against denying the opposition leader the PAC-I chairman slot more than two years ago. “After opposition members’ resignations, the standing committees have no democratic standing in their decisions,” it says.
