PN secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan said the committee will comprise representatives from the component parties.

Takiyuddin also said that the PN Supreme Council had rescinded an offer to admit MIC, a Barisan Nasional component party, as it had yet to decide on whether it wanted to be part of the coalition.

“PN is open to an electoral pact with any party that shared its principles and vision as well as those who wanted to be a strategic partner without becoming a component,” he said in a statement.

Takiyuddin said electoral pacts were appropriate in view of the current political landscape apart from wanting to uphold a “constructive” political alliance to ensure stability.

Takiyuddin said the offer to admit MIC as a PN member was withdrawn “due to the lack of a confirmation, apart from an official statement by MIC that it had never officially applied to join PN”.

On March 25, MIC deputy president M Saravanan had said the party will remain in BN “for now”, but would not confirm if the party had ruled out joining PN.

Saravanan said MIC was reassessing its position following developments within PN at the time, a reference to PAS vice-president Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar being appointed as the coalition’s chairman.

Talk of MIC leaving BN had been going on for some time, especially after MIC’s general assembly in November, when delegates gave the leadership the mandate to consider such a move amid dissatisfaction over the party’s role and relevance.

On March 17, Takiyuddin announced that MIC had officially been accepted as a PN component in December.

MIC, together with MCA and Umno, was a founding member of the pre-independence Alliance Party, which became BN in 1973.