Amid a legal battle over the throne of Punjab, a 37-member cabinet of the provincial government took oath on Sunday.
Punjab Governor Baligh-ur-Rehman administered oath to the cabinet members at the Governor’s House. It was the second oath-taking ceremony that took place at the Governor’s House in a period of around three months. Punjab Chief Secretary (CS) Kamran Ali Afzal and Punjab Police Inspector General Faisal Shahkar also attended the oath ceremony. Afzal read the notification of appointment during the ceremony. The development comes just a day after Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Hamza Shehbaz took oath for the second time as the Punjab chief minister. However, the top court made Hamza Punjab’s ‘trustee chief minister’ until today (Monday).
“Hamza Shehbaz cannot use CM’s powers for political gains,” Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Umar Ata Bandial had observed while hearing a plea of Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leader Chaudhry Parvez Elahi against ruling of Punjab Assembly Deputy Speaker Dost Muhammad Mazari in which he had rejected 10 votes of the PML-Q and announced Hamza as winner in the run-off election for the office of the Punjab CM on July 22. The top court had also observed that the province could not be left without governance.
The PML-N leaders who took oath included Rana Muhammad Iqbal Khan, Mehar Ijaz Ahmed Achlana, Siddique Khan Baloch, Kazim Ali Pirzada, Ch Shafiq, Malik Nadeem Kamran, Mian Yawar Zaman, Col (re) Ayub Gadhi, Ch Iqbal Gujjar, Muhammad Manshaullah Butt, Tanvir Aslam Malik, Jahangir Khanzada, Rana Mashhood Ahmed Khan, Mian Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman, Khawaja Imran Nazir, Bilal Yasin, Malik Saiful Malook Khokhar, Fida Hussain Wattoo, Rana Ejaz Noon, Azma Zahid Bukhari, Khalil Tahir Sandhu, Ghulam Qasim Hinjra, Col (r) Rana Muhammad Tariq, Zaheer Iqbal Channar, Zeeshan Rafique, Sania Ashiq, Syed Hassan Murtaza, Syed Ali Haider Gilani, Bilal Asghar Warraich, Qasim Abbas Langah, Malik Asad Khokhar, Ahmed Ali Aulakh, Sibtain Bukhari, Saba Sadiq, Imran Khalid Butt and Rana Liaqat Ali.
PML-N leaders including Malik Ahmad Khan, Khawaja Salman Rafique, Attaullah Tarar and Awais Leghari, who had served as ministers in the first cabinet of Hamza, however, did not take oath.
Earlier in the day, a meeting was held at Model Town with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the chair to deliberate over the legal battle before the Supreme Court. Sources said that the PM consulted the party leaders and then made a decision regarding the provincial cabinet.
Parvez Elahi in a statement termed the provincial cabinet illegal and unconstitutional, saying that “a ship-size” cabinet was a clear violation of the SC orders. He alleged that the trustee CM opened the mouth of the treasury of the Punjab government to save his post and one out of every three people had been made a minister.
