The PPP and the PML-Q will resume their talks on seat adjustment on Tuesday amid a fresh controversy arising out of the latter’s decision to award party ticket to Chaudhry Parvez Elahi to contest the elections for his native National Assembly seat (NA-105) from Gujrat.

Talking to Dawn, PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain said the decision to award the ticket to Mr Elahi was irreversible whether the PPP agreed to it or not. “Let there be an open competition and the best person will emerge as winner,” he saidChaudhry Shujaat said there had been an understanding with the PPP that “Gujrat is exempted from the seat adjustment formula”.The claim was, however, rejected by Punjab PPP chief Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo. He declared the formula would be applicable all over the province without any exemption.

Mr Wattoo said leaders of the two parties would meet on Tuesday to discuss the seat adjustment issue, adding that he was hopeful of a breakthrough.The Punjab PPP chief said his party would go into the talks with “an open heart and mind” and with a hope that the other side would reciprocate.

Sources in the PPP said there had been an understanding that winners and runners-up of the last elections from either party would be fielded and supported jointly in their constituencies this time. In the constituencies where the winner or runner-up of the PPP or the PML-Q has defected to another party, the two parties will field the strongest candidate.

The sources said the PPP leadership believed the PML-Q’s decision to field Mr Elahi for NA-105 was a violation of the understanding since the seat had been won by PPP’s Chuadhry Ahmed Mukhtar, who defeated Shujaat Hussain in the 2008 elections.

Talking to reporters after attending the oath-taking ceremony of the caretaker prime minister at the Presidency on Monday, Mr Mukhtar said that the electoral alliance with the PML-Q had ended and now the two parties would face each other in every constituency.

His statement, however, was not officially supported by the PPP and it said talks with the PML-Q on seat adjustment would continue.Chaudhry Shujaat said the seat had always been won by him and his family, except in 1993 and 2008, adding that on both occasions Mr Mukhtar had the support of the establishment. “In 2008 Gen Musharraf did not want me to win the seat.”

The PML-Q, after the suspension of talks last week, had put on hold its decision to part ways with the PPP after Chaudhry Shujaat received a telephone call from President Asif Ali Zardari before his departure for Turkmenistan.The PML-Q had suspended the talks in protest over alleged attempts by the PPP to induce its strong candidates to change sides.

Sources in the PML-Q said the party had agreed to resume the talks after President Zardari, in a three-hour-long meeting with the Chaudhrys on Saturday, gave an assurance that the grievances would be redressed.The representatives of the two parties will meet just three days before the last date for submission of nomination papers by the candidates.

Relations between the two former coalition partners turned sour recently after the PPP allegedly tried to lure the PML-Q’s potential candidates like Ahmed Yar Hiraj, Faisal Saleh Hayat, Tariq Bashir Cheema, Anwar Cheema and Mushtaq Cheema. The PML-Q was particularly angry over the recent joining of the PPP by its former minister Sardar Bahadur Sehar from Layyah.