Not quite unanimous

The claim made by federal Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination Raza Rabbani in the National Assembly on November 21, 2008 that NWFP Assembly had twice passed unanimous resolutions in favour of renaming the NWFP as Pakhtunkhwa is totally baseless and a negation of facts. In fact the NWFP Assembly never passed any unanimous resolution in favour of Pakhtunkhwa. The resolution for renaming of NWFP as Pakhtunkhwa was moved in the provincial assembly for the first time on November 29, 1990 and was defeated. There were 48 (58%) votes against the resolution, 28 (34%) in favour while 7 members (8%) abstained.
Another resolution was moved for the second time and passed by the NWFP Assembly on November 13, 1997 but with a thin majority and in highly disputed proceedings. The house had 83 members.