The main opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) wants to see all the four governors changed before the next general election, Leader of Opposition in National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said on Wednesday.

“The PML-N will formally put its demand before the government to change all the governors, including the newly-appointed Punjab governor, at the time of the elections,” he said in a statement issued a day after Makhdoom Ahmed Mehmood took oath as Punjab governor.

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) termed the demand “unjustified and without any logic”, saying that like the president the governors had no role in the administrative affairs of the provincial governments and they could stay in their offices during the elections.“There is no provision in the Constitution under which governors should be replaced before the general election,” PPP spokesman Senator Saeed Ghani said.

He said the governors were symbolic heads of the provinces and had no power to interfere in the election process.If anyone had a complaint against the involvement of a governor or any other government official in the election process, he could take the matter to the Election Commission, he said.

Senator Pervez Rashid, a spokesman for the PML-N, said  his party had apprehensions that the present governors could influence the outcome of elections.Referring to a reported statement of Punjab PPP president Manzoor Wattoo that the appointment of the new governor in Punjab would prove beneficial for his party in the elections, the senator said the PML-N had the right to make the demand to change the governors since they had been appointed on political grounds.