In a press release, Ahmed Shehzad Farooq Rana, the PCB election commissioner and acting chairman, said: “The election of the PCB Chair will be held in a fair and transparent manner whilst adopting due process and ensuring completion of all legal formalities… on Tuesday, 27 June, at the PCB headquarters in Lahore. The election schedule will be issued after receiving nominations from the departments/service organisations.”
The PCB’s board will comprise ten members: four regional representatives, four representatives of services organisations and the two members nominated by the patron/prime minister. All board members, including the chairman, will be appointed for three years.
However, Sethi’s list of nominees for the board stirred a legal complication as four regions – Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Rawalpindi – were named out of the rotation.
In the press release, Rana rejected Sethi’s nominations and replaced them with representatives of Larkana, Dera Murad Jamali, Bahawalpur and Hyderabad. The four departments included are National Bank of Pakistan, State Bank of Pakistan, Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited and Sui Southern Gas Company.
It was Sethi who had ended Ashraf’s first stint as PCB chairman in 2014. At that time, the pair was involved in a legal battle for the chairmanship, with the position switching hands several times. Eventually, then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif settled the issue by ousting Ashraf and bringing in Sethi.