PESHAWAR: The Pak­is­tan Democratic Move­ment (PDM) on Saturday announced that it would not participate in the March 19 by-elections to be held on three seats of the National Assembly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as it would be “a waste of time and money”.

In a statement, PDM’s provincial coordinator Abdul Jalil Jan said the PDM and its allies had already decided not to take part in the by-elections, adding they were focusing on the general elections.

The by-elections are sch­e­duled be held on March 19 for NA-22, NA-24 and NA-31.

“We don’t want to waste our money and our time for campaigning or contesting the by-polls and that too for a tenure which will har­dly last three or four mon­ths,” Mr Jan told Dawn. The coordinator said they would be participating in the next general polls.

It may be recalled that NA-22, NA-24 and NA-31 were won by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Ali Moh­a­mmad Khan, Fazal Moh­ammad Khan and Shaukat Ali, respectively, in the 2018 general elections.

However, these seats fell vacant when the PTI decided to resign from the National Assembly after the party’s government was sent packing through a vote of confidence. The decision to quit the lower house of parliament was taken during PTI’s parliamentary party meeting, which was presided over by PTI Chairman Imran Khan.

“The parliamentary party has decided to resign from the assemblies against the imported government,” PTI Central Information Secretary Farrukh Habib had confirmed in a tweet.

The resignations were later accepted by Speaker National Assembly Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and by-elections were announced. The by-polls on all the three constituencies were won by the PTI chairman. However, the seats fell vacant again after Mr Khan failed to take oath.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2023



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