Staff Reporter
Islamabad
PML-N MNA from Sheikhupura Rana Tanvir Hussain was on Thursday appointed as the chairman of the Public
Accounts Committee (PAC).
After the position fell vacant when Leader of the Opposition Shehbaz Sharif resigned from the post
earlier this month, National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser had today convened a meeting of the PAC today
for the election of its new chairman.
In his resignation, submitted on November 18, a day before his departure to London with former prime
minister Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N president had nominated Hussain as his replacement.
“I would like to propose that MNA Rana Tanvir may be considered for this position as decided by the
joint opposition parties,” Shehbaz wrote to the speaker in his brief resignation.
While the PML-N claimed that it had taken the other opposition parties on board on the nomination of
Rana Tanvir as the new PAC chairman, a key office-bearer of PPP had said that they had not been
consulted before his nomination.
However, Thursday, Rana Tanvir was named for the position by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) Sardar
Nasrullah Khan Dreshak, PML-N Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed and PPP leader former prime minister Raja
Pervaiz Ashraf.
After his appointment, Tanvir thanked his party and opposition party members. He promised that he would
run PAC with neutrality.
The PAC has been non-functional as Shahbaz has not presided over its meeting for nearly six months. It
was in May that Shahbaz, who was on a private visit to the UK, had first announced his decision to quit
PAC’s chairmanship, a position he had secured after prolonged wrangling between the government and the
opposition parties.
Shahbaz had been elected as PAC chairman unopposed on December 22 last year after Prime Minister Imran
Khan finally surrendered before the opposition’s demand in the wake of their threats to withdraw from
all the National Assembly committees.
