BNP Mengal ends coalition with PTI govt

BNP Mengal ends coalition with PTI govt

ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) – Balochistan National Party (BNP) Chief Akhtar Mengal on Wednesday has parted ways with the incumbent government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). While addressing the National Assembly (NA) session, Mengal made this announcement and said that his party has waited for two years but no one has bothered to pay attention to their demands despite fully supporting the government in last budget.

He said that PTI had signed two agreements at the time of government formation after the 2018 General Elections and later during the presidential elections, but not a single point of the accord was implemented.

We will stay in the Parliament and will keep on raising the issues, he added.

Number of seats in Parliament

It is to be mentioned here that National Assembly has total number of 342 seats and at present, 341 are active members. One seat was recently vacated after the death of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F) Munir Khan Orakzai. Any party willing to form government needs majority of 172 NA seats.

Currently, BNP enjoys four seats in NA and one in Senate. Before the withdrawal of BNP-Mengal, PTI had 156 seats and with all its coalition parties, the total number surged to 184. 

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has seven, Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) has five, Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) five, Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) has three and Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) and Awami Muslim League have one seat each besides two independent lawmakers.

MoU signed between PTI, BNP-Mengal

The six points of memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between PTI and BNP in August 2018 are:

Recovery of missing persons   Implementation of the National Action Plan   Implementation of six percent quota for Balochistan in the federal government   Immediate repatriation of Afghan refugees   Construction of dams in the province to resolve the acute water crisis   The alliance with the PTI was only at the Centre, while the BNP-M’s alliance with the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl in Balochis­tan continued at the provincial level.