ISLAMABAD, Feb 10: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) have worked out a seat adjustment formula for the upcoming elections.

Under the formula, each party will name candidates for the seats won by it in the last elections. In a constituency where neither of the parties had emerged victorious, the party that had secured the second highest number of votes will field a candidate.

The ruling allies — PPP and PML-Q — have already announced that they will jointly contest the polls.

“We have worked out a formula under which our party will field candidates for all seats won by it in the last elections,” PML-Q spokesman Kamil Ali Agha told Dawn on Sunday. However, he said, there were a few seats about which a final decision had yet to be taken.

Talks between the two parties over seat adjustment are being held amid reports that a powerful group in the PML-Q is opposing an electoral alliance with the PPP and wants the party to contest the polls on its own.

According to media reports, the two parties have differences over about 60 seats of National and Punjab assemblies won by the PML-Q candidates who later quit the party and formed a forward block.

The PML-Q leaders, who recently discussed the issue with Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, insisted that as the seats had been won on their ticket, they had the right to field candidates in the constituencies concerned.

On the other hand, Punjab PPP president Mian Manzoor Wattoo is reportedly of the view that members of the forward block had won the seats in their individual capacity and not because of the PML-Q. Therefore, the PPP had the right to field its candidates for the seats.

Mr Agha denied any disagreements about the seats. He said most of the 60 seats belonged to Punjab Assembly
Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said it had been decided in principle that the seats won by a party would have candidates of the same party.

He said that by and large the issue (of seat adjustment) had been resolved through the formula but changes and readjustments could be made about some important seats if the leaderships of the two parties insisted.

The PPP and PML-Q would hold further talks from Feb 15 on some seats of the provincial assembly, he said.