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Islamabad: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shahbaz Sharif took oath on Friday as a member of the Punjab Assembly at a special session of the legislature in Lahore and is set to become chief minister of the key province.
The younger brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is the joint chief ministerial candidate of the PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party in the election to be held in the assembly on Sunday.
The sitting chief minister Dost Mohammad Khosa, also from the PML-N, has resigned to make way for Shahbaz.
Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, a PPP loyalist, has accepted the resignation but has asked Khosa to continue in office till the election of the new chief minister on Sunday.
Addressing reporters after the session, Sahbaz Sharif said he would try to provide relief to the people in the forthcoming Punjab budget.
Asked about President Pervez Musharraf whose impeachment the PML-N continues to pursue, he said the relationship with the presidency would always be subject to the constitution and the law of the land.
Earlier while he was taking oath in the assembly, the hall resounded with chants of "Welcome, Welcome Shahbaz" and "Go Musharraf Go."
The incoming chief minister said the PML-N would fully support the planned long march of lawyers starting on Tuesday to press for the reinstatement of the dozens of judges deposed by Musharraf in November last year.
Meanwhile, in Islamabad, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court took up a petition moved by a candidate for the June 26 Punjab assembly by-elections against the acceptance of the candidature of Shahbaz Sharif, who was elected unopposed from Bhakkar town.
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