Senate approves KP emergency resolution hours after National Assembly, as joint sitting is called to decide governor’s rule

ISLAMABAD: The emergency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa now carries the approval of both houses of Parliament. Hours after the National Assembly voted on Wednesday, the Senate passed its own resolution by majority, with Chairman Yousaf Raza Gilani in the chair and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry moving the motion in the upper house as he had in the lower. The day’s question hour was set aside in the Senate too. PTI senators then walked out, and the JUI-F also opposed the resolution, but the government had the numbers and the motion carried.

One door remains. The President has summoned a joint sitting of Parliament for Thursday, October 15, to take up governor’s rule, which was proclaimed alongside the emergency on October 11. The two measures travel on different constitutional tracks: the emergency, issued under Article 232, needed both houses within ten days and has now got them, while governor’s rule under Article 234 goes before the joint sitting and falls away after two months unless it is approved to continue — and it cannot run beyond six months in any event.

What the debate sounded like

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar spent much of his time on procedure before turning to substance, arguing that a resolution moved under a constitutional requirement is not bound by the ordinary rules for private members’ resolutions or by a seven-day notice. His numbers were the government’s core case: 2,911 terrorism incidents in KP between 2021 and 2024, against 3,787 from October 15, 2025 to October 9, 2026. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif put the human cost at 3,900 people martyred in fourteen months. Opposition Leader Mehmood Khan Achakzai demanded the measures be reversed and warned that Sindh could be next for governor’s rule, over water and minerals. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, as he did in the lower house, blamed PTI for the crisis while urging the government to find a middle ground through talks.

There was a smaller, telling development on the margins. Speaker Ayaz Sadiq has issued production orders for two detained National Assembly members, Sana Ullah Khan Masti Khel and Dawar Khan Kundi, who are in Punjab Police custody, so they can attend the coming sessions. And in Peshawar, the province at the centre of all this argument, daily life is edging back: the containers that blocked roads after October 11 have been removed, schools have reopened and the Bus Rapid Transit is running again, though security around the Red Zone and other sensitive areas remains tight.