MARDAN: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Jamaat-i-Islami and Pakistan People’s Party have joined hands to form district and tehsil governments in Mardan district.

Addressing a press conference at the residence of PPP district president Nawabzada Aurangzeb Khan here on Sunday, the leaders of the three parties announced to form an alliance for formation of the district and tehsil governments.

On the occasion, PTI was represented by Provincial Education Minister Mohammad Atif Khan, MPA Ubaid Khan Mayar and Faisal Saleem while JI was represented by its district emir Dr Ataur Rahman, former provincial minister Fazal Rabani and Advocate Saeed Akhtar. On behalf of PPP, its district president Nawabzada Aurangzeb Khan, Asad Ali Kashmiri and Alamgir Khan were present on the occasion.

Speaking at the press conference, the leaders of the tripartite alliance said that they remained in contact with each other for the last several days to discuss formation of district and tehsil governments in Mardan. They said that finally they devised a formula to form coalition governments at district and tehsils levels.

According to the agreed formula, PTI will get the slot of district nazim

Mardan district is consisted of three tehsils -- Mardan, Takht Bhai and Katlang.

As per the agreed formula, they said, district nazim for Mardan would be elected from PTI while district naib nazim would be taken from PPP. Similarly, nazim of Mardan tehsil will be a member of PTI and tehsil naib nazim will be from JI for the first two years. For the next two years, JI will get the slot of tehsil nazim while the post of naib nazim for same tehsil will be given to PTI.

“Likewise, nazim of Takht Bhai tehsil will be from JI and naib nazim from PTI for the first two years. During the last two years, the slot of tehsil nazim will go to PTI and that of naib nazim to JI in the same tehsil,” they added.

However, the tehsil council of Katlang has been left open owing to non-availability of majority seats there as the component parties of the alliance have only four out of total 19 seats in Katlang.

The leaders of the alliance claimed that three district councillors of PML-N and two independent district councillors belonging to Imran Mohmand group had extended their unconditional support to them.

Of the total 112 district councillors in Mardan, PTI has 46 members, ANP has 34, JUI-F has 14, PPP has eight, JI has four and PML- N has three members. The number of independent district councillors is also three in Mardan.

However, the leaders of tripartite alliance claimed that instead of required 58 members, they had the support of 63 members in Mardan district council.

Soon after the announcement of unofficial results of local government polls in Mardan district, PPP and JI had joined hands with ANP and JUI-F to form local government in the district but later both PPP and JI parted ways with their allies after developing differences with leadership of ANP and JUI-F.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2015

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