ISLAMABAD: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Shaukat Tarin on Friday took oath as a Senator after he won the by-election for a general seat in the upper house from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Shaukat Tarin was elected a senator from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on a seat vacated by PTI leader Muhammad Ayub Afridi. Last month, Afridi had submitted his resignation as member of the upper house to Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani.
Out of 145 members of the provincial assembly, 122 cast their votes during Senate by-election. Tarin won the seat after securing 87 votes. Meanwhile, Shaukat Jamal Ameerzada of the Awami National Party and Zahir Shah of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl secured 13 votes each.
Tarin was appointed as the finance minister on April 17 and his constitutional tenure ended on October 16 after which he was appointed as the finance adviser to the PM. According to the Constitution, in order to continue as the finance minister for longer than six months, Tarin needed to be elected to parliament.
Second attempt
The government had previously tried to get former finance minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, who was also not a member of parliament, elected to the Senate.
Shaikh was appointed as the finance minister in December 2020 and was the government’s candidate for the hotly contested general seat from Islamabad in March’s Senate elections. However, in a blow to the government, Shaikh lost to the joint opposition candidate Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Shaikh was later removed as finance minister on March 29 and was replaced with PTI’s Hammad Azhar, who was shortly replaced with Tarin.
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