The major political party in the coalition government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Awami National Party (ANP) is eyeing the winning of seven seats in the elections for the Senate (upper house) of the parliament scheduled on March 2, 2012 while PPP is likely to clinch four seats, while one will go to JUI-F.
Eleven Senators from the province are due to retired in next month after completion of six years term.
According to sources ANP has decided to clinch seven of twelve Senate seats from the province and its coalition partner has to get four seats.
The JUI-F to get one seat, but other opposition parties with a total strength of 19 members are unlikely to get elect their nominees.
With majority members in the parliamentary parties of opposition, the JUI-F MPA, Akram Khan Durrani is the leader of the opposition, while other political parties included PML-N, PML-Q and PPP-Sherpao has 9, 7 and 3 legislators, respectively.
But, due to lack of consensus they are not agreeing on unanimous candidate will lose chance electing their own representative.
However, development of consensus amongst them can cut the strength of ANP triumph to six.
The political parties have invited applications and have started selecting suitable candidates for the polls.
The retirement of eleven Senators will bring the representation of Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), PP-Sherpao, while PML-Q will lose representation from the province.
The retiring candidates are included Professor Khurshid Ahmad, Professor Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, Afia Zia (JI), Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, Talha Mehmood and recently elected Qari Abdullah JUI-F, Saleem Saifullah Khan, Begum Fakharuzaaman (PML-Like Minded), Haji Ghufran (PP-Sherpao), Ilyas Ahmad Bilour (ANP) and independent Ammar Ahmad Khan.
The seats to become vacant are seven general, and two each seats are reserved for women and technocrats.
In the Senate polls of March 2009 there was 50/50 distribution of seats between the coalition partners of ANP and PPP in the province.
However, this time, the ANP will go for clinching seven seats and will leave four seats for its junior coalition partner PPP, while one seat will go JUI-F.
The minority seats for which election will be held for first time will also go to ANP.
The major political parties ANP and PPP have yet to finalise candidates for the election.
However, sources in JUI-F said that the possible probable of candidates of the party would be the one of the retiring Senators Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan and Talha Mahmood.
Half of the strength of the upper house of the parliament is going to retire next month.
The members of the national and provincial assemblies will elect candidates from their respective provinces, FATA and Federal Capital Islamabad.
For first time four minority representatives will also be elected to the Senate with one member from each province.
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