PESHAWAR: Three women from Chitral have reached the assemblies on the reserved seats allocated to different political parties.
They included Ghazala Anjum of the PML-N, Khadija Bibi of ANP and Arifa Bibi of JUI-F.
Ghazala Anjum has become MNA on the quota of the PML-N while Arifa Bibi (Jughore) and Khadija Bibi (Drosh) reached the KP assembly on the quota of the JUI-F and ANP, respectively.
These three women were accommodated after the political parties occupied about 77 reserved seats for women and minorities in national and provincial assemblies that were actually to be allocated to the Sunni Ittehad Council, comprising independent members backed by the PTI.
However, the Election Commission of Pakistan rejected a request of the Sunni Ittehad Council for allocation of reserved seats to its members. As a result, the other political parties doled out the seats to their workers.
The PTI has challenged the ECP decision in the high court of Peshawar and the court today restrained the speaker of the assembly from administering oath to the new reserved seat members till tomorrow.
In case, the court at any stage nullifys the decision of the election commission, all these members will lose their seats.
With addition of three seats, Chitral now has two members in the National Assembly and four in the KP assembly.
Khadija Bibi had also contested the February 8th general elections for NA-1 on the ANP ticket and scored about 24,00 votes.