* Durrani says assembly will meet today
* Alleges ‘rival forces’ planning to stop MMA newcomers from taking oath

PESHAWAR: NWFP Governor Khalilur Rehman and Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani went into a bitter constitutional dispute over calling a provincial assembly session after the former refused to do so on Sunday.


Accusing the governor of using delaying tactics, Durrani announced a meeting of the provincial assembly at any cost today (Monday), and said the speaker had the constitutional authority to summon assembly sessions. He made the announcement at a convention sponsored by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) to honour elected nazims, naib nazims and councillors of the province.


He said the provincial government wanted to call an assembly session before April 4, the date fixed by the Peshawar High Court for the hearings of two sacked JUI-F women MPAs’ writ petitions and to administer oath to newly announced legislators.


“Being the constitutional head of the province, a summary has already been sent to the governor in this regard,” he said, adding the governor was being pressed by people at the helm of affairs, but the governor was also bound constitutionally to follow his advice. The chief minister said he was forced to make a decision after the governor said he had not received the summary to summon an assembly session. A requisition required to summon the assembly session would be submitted at 9am on Monday and formal proceedings would start at 9.30am.


He alleged that ‘rival forces’ had made planned to stop newcomers from the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal from taking oath.


During the chief minister’s speech, his advisor told him that the governor had sent the summary back with some reservations, at which Durrani asked the governor not to create hurdles, saying it would be for the first time in NWFP’s history that an assembly session had been delayed by a governor for no reason.


Regarding the four MPs from his party that were sacked, Durrani said the MPs had resigned of their own will, and they had agreed not to go to the judiciary if the committee passed a decision against them.
Durrani said he could go to any extreme for democracy, and asked the judiciary to take suo moto action against some of the newly elected senators allegedly involved in horse-trading.


Also, Mian Mohibullah Kakakhel, counsel for the sacked members of parliament, said the speaker of the assembly could requisite a session under rule 3 read with Article 54 of the Constitution, , but added it was not possible after the governor’s refusal. “After the refusal of governor to convene the session, the meeting if held would be illegal and ultra constitutional,” he added. “Administering an oath to the newly-elected members of parliament would have no effect on the cases of his clients who were seeking a nullification of their membership by the speaker.”


Later, Durrani told a private television channel that the MMA would not accept any undemocratic move from the central government including governor rule in the province. However, Federal Information Minister Shiekh Rashid Ahmad told the same channel that the federal government had a “good working relationship with the provincial government and no intentions to take such extreme steps".





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