PTI protests in Senate for appointment of opposition leader

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and its allied parties Friday again protested noisily in the Senate and asked for appointment of leader of the opposition, saying the House was incomplete without fulfillment of the requirement.

PTI legislators chanted slogans and even tried to stop some other lawmakers from speaking, including Awami National Party leader Aimal Wali Khan, who chided them for spoiling the House proceedings. The proceedings were also marred by an exchange of hot words between PTI’s Saifullah Abro and Nasir Butt of the ruling PMLN during the question hour on asking supplementary questions.

After the question hour, PTI Senator Azam Swati rose to draw attention towards the procedure and legal process with regards the leader of the opposition. He insisted the House was incomplete without the opposition leader.

Addressing Minister for Law and Justice Azam Nazeer Tarar, who was present on the treasury benches, he asked were they correct in making this demand and reminded him that the House would be informed about progress on this matter.

The law minister clarified that the matter was purely the House business while the government is the third party, adding leader of the House had also said the other day that definitely there should be an opposition leader.

Tarar agreed with the opposition lawmaker that as per the traditions, history and the rules, there should be an opposition leader but insisted that for this the chairman and the speaker only had this jurisdiction and they have to satisfy themselves first.

“The chairman and the speaker take this process to its culmination. But here the chairman has to satisfy himself that the one nominated commands majority’s support in the opposition,” he emphasised.

He suggested to the opposition to seek a meeting with the Senate chairman in his chamber and discuss this matter with him and wished best of luck to the opposition.

Tarar also recalled that the chairman had shared his own experience, according to which his members had presented him through an application for being named opposition leader and JUIF had also put (its own candidate) and due to this, there was some delay as well.

The minister made mention of the times when he was lawyer of then opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif, who was put in the jail and rarely his production orders used to be issued while the opposition leader’s seat would remain vacant (often). But he contended that he did not wish this to be repeated.

At one point, PTI lawmakers staged walkout from the House but their bid to create quorum issue could not succeed, as when it was pointed out, after count, the House was in order with the presence of 27 members.

Taking the floor, independent lawmaker Abdul Qadir blasted the IPPs for sucking blood of the poorest and the richest, saying less than 100 IPPs were more powerful than the state. “I challenge the government to carry out forensic audit of these power producers, which could not be done so far,” he asserted.

He pointed out that there were Rs1,200 billion uplift funds for a country of 240 million people this year while the government would pay Rs2,200 billion as capacity charges to these IPPs as well. He urged the prime minister to focus on what he called the power crisis in the country and encourage solarisation.

Responding to him, the law minister said that the prime minister was clear in his vision about solarisation and whenever net metering proposal was floated, the cabinet rejected it. He added that forensic audits had been done and were under way as well and due to this, power rates re-negotiated and the power unit over Rs50 was brought down to Rs32-33. He promised to put the senator’s concerns before the cabinet.

Earlier, on a point of public importance, PMLN’s Khalil Tahir Sandhu congratulated the recently-elected mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who is from minorities, which are counted nine percent of the city population.

He wished that the Constitution was amended accordingly to let any Christian make his way to such seats in Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, KP and Balochistan.

On the legislative side, the House passed a resolution to extend the Frontier Constabulary (Reorganisation) Ordinance 2025, for a further period of 120 days with effect from November 10, 2025.

The Senate also passed three bills, including the Federal Prosecution Service Amendment Bill, 2025, the Capital Development Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2025 and the National School of Public Policy (Amendment) Bill, 2025. The Upper House will now reconvene at 11:30am on Saturday.