KARACHI: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) reached out to opposition parties including the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) to to get its nominee for Sindh Chief Minister (CM) Syed Murad Ali Shah elected ‘unopposed’. According to sources, the PPP approached the MQM-P, asking it to withdraw its candidate Ali Khurshidi from the chief minister’s election scheduled to be held on Monday.
Despite having a two-third majority in the Sindh assembly, the PPP is aiming to get the chief minister slot unopposed with the support of MQM-P and other opposition parties.
The sources privy to the development said that the PPP has also reached out to members of the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) who took oath earlier in the day.
The PPP asked the SIC and JI members to vote for Syed Murad Ali Shah in the CM election.
The election for Sindh’s chief minister will be held on Monday. The PPP nominated Syed Murad Ali Shah for the slot while Ali Khurshidi has submitted nomination papers from the MQM-P.
Sindh Assembly Secretariat announced that nomination papers of Syed Murad Ali Shah of PPP and Ali Khurshidi of MQM-P have been accepted. “The CM election will be held on Monday at 2pm,” it added.
Earlier in the day, PPP candidates Awais Qadir Shah and Anthony Naveed were elected as Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Sindh Assembly respectively.
As per details, as many as 147 members of the provincial assembly cast their votes during the polling for the assembly speaker.
The outgoing speaker Agha Siraj Durrani announced the results after the conclusion of the voting pro-cess where PPP’s Awais Qadir bagged victory after securing 111 votes meanwhile his opponent MQM’s Advocate Sofia Shah secured 36 votes.
Whereas, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Jamat-e-Islami (JI) boycotted the polling for the election of speaker and deputy speaker of the Sindh Assembly. –Agencies
