Reporting snapshot · 5 November 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The two committees were announced at a press conference at Maulana Fazlur Rehman's residence late on Wednesday, 4 November. No written statement, agenda or fixed conference date has been published, and the federal government had not responded by Thursday morning.
What the opposition announced on 4 November
Opposition parties in Pakistan said on Wednesday evening, 4 November, that they had formed two committees — one to organise an All Parties Conference and another to resolve differences between themselves — after a meeting at the Islamabad residence of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman. The parties at the table were the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the Tehreek-e-Tahafuz-e-Ain Pakistan (TTAP) and JUI-F, and the talks centred on the emergency and governor’s rule imposed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on 11 October. The Express Tribune described the gathering as the first joint opposition meeting held to formulate a response to those measures, and Pakistan Today reported it as a step towards a united front agreed after consultations among the parties.
The two committees
Allama Raja Nasir Abbas, the vice chairman of TTAP and the Senate Opposition Leader, announced the committees at the press conference. The first has six members — Salman Akram Raja, Kamran Murtaza, Mustafa Khokhar, Aamir Dogar, Nasir Shirazi and Mohammad Aslam Ghauri — and will consult political parties, finalise an agenda and announce the date of the conference, which Abbas said would be held within a week to ten days, The Express Tribune reported.
The second is a subcommittee formed to settle differences among the parties and explore how they can work together; its coordinators are Sallahuddin Ayubi, Akhunzada Hussain and Khalid Yousaf. Achakzai said that body would work on what he called the reservations between the PTI and the JUI-F and on relations between the two parties.
The conference itself is not a new idea. In September, TTAP and PTI leaders had said they intended to hold consultations on a multi-party conference covering national issues such as the creation of new provinces, law and order, and the economy — a plan announced before the emergency and governor’s rule, Pakistan Today reported. What changed on 4 November is the machinery around it: committees with named members, a deadline and an agenda-setting task.
Who was in the room
PTI sent former National Assembly speaker Asad Qaiser, secretary general Salman Akram Raja, chief whip Aamir Dogar, Senator Noor-ul-Haq Qadri and PTI legal counsel to Imran Khan, Khalid Yousaf Chaudhry. TTAP was represented by its chief, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, and its spokesman Hussain Ahmad Yousafzai, and JUI-F by Fazl, its vice-president and K-P chapter president Senator Maulana Attaur Rehman, Senators Kamran Murtaza and Maulana Attaul Haq Darwish, and former K-P chief minister Akram Khan Durrani, Pakistan Today reported.
The JUI-F media cell confirmed the event as a meeting of the “united opposition”, and TTAP confirmed it too, The Express Tribune reported. The meeting came a day after PTI said it would welcome support from Fazlur Rehman in its struggle against the government. “It is possible that some may walk with us for one mile, some for 10 miles, and some may go with us till the end,” PTI secretary general Salman Akram Raja said, according to Pakistan Today.
What the leaders said
Achakzai said the gathering had been convened to condemn the government’s attacks on Fazl and to show solidarity with him, warning that “this approach will not work” and that any move against one of them carried dangerous consequences. He said the opposition would launch a movement across the country against what he called an “undemocratic government”, The Express Tribune reported.
Fazl told the press conference that the opposition had raised the emergency, governor’s rule and attempts to take control of mineral resources repeatedly, and that the current measures looked driven by control of resources rather than by the political factors behind earlier decisions. He said the federal government’s stated concerns were the National Finance Commission award and mineral resources, and referred to attempts to bring profitable coastal areas including Gwadar under federal control and to discussions about placing islands in Sindh under federal control, adding that the rights provinces hold under the 18th Amendment are now under threat. On the proposal to create new provinces, he said granting financial powers to district governments would set provincial institutions against the provincial government.
Abbas said the country was being run in an unconstitutional manner and that the rule of law had disappeared, The Express Tribune reported.
The federal government has defended the emergency as a response to the security situation and to what it called the provincial government’s refusal to cooperate on counter-terrorism. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif framed the decision as a compulsion after 48 hours of talks with the PTI collapsed, KhabarWire reported on 18 October. The measures have kept producing administrative and political consequences since, among them the Election Commission’s order for local government elections in 23 K-P districts while holding the schedule off in 12 others, KhabarWire reported on 29 October. The opposition has also worked together before: parties agreed in late August to form a joint opposition in Parliament and to back a long march, KhabarWire reported at the time.
Why it matters
The significance is procedural. Before 4 November, the opposition had announced shared positions — a joint parliamentary front formed in August, a long march, and petitions to the courts — without a common schedule. Two committees with named members, a deadline of seven to ten days and a task of drawing up an agenda turn an expression of intent into a timetable, and that timetable forces parties that want a seat at the table to answer within days.
For the federal government, the statement narrows the political space it has worked in since October. It creates a forum the government cannot join, and a deadline that the opposition has set for itself.
What is still uncertain
The paperwork comes first. The announcement was made through statements by the parties, and no agenda, conference date or written communiqué has been published, so what the conference will decide is still open.
Attendance is the second question. The announcement covers the three parties in the room and does not say which other parties the committees will invite, or how parties outside this grouping will respond.
The countrywide movement has no programme, timetable or venue attached to it. Achakzai’s vow describes the destination; nothing yet says who organises it or when it starts.
And the federal response is not on the record. Ministers have not said how they will answer a conference assembled to coordinate opposition to emergency and governor’s rule they maintain are necessary for security. The legal track is untouched: the measures remain in force while petitions challenging them are before the Federal Constitutional Court and the Peshawar High Court, a dispute KhabarWire has followed.
