In another immediate relief to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday suspended National Assembly (NA) Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf’s notification regarding the acceptance of PTI MNAs’ resignations from Islamabad. Issuing the interim order on petitions filed by Asad Umar, Ali Nawaz Awan and Raja Khurram Nawaz, the IHC also suspended the process of by-elections in the petitioners’ constituencies. 

IHC judge heard a petition filed by 3 PTI MNAs including former finance minister Asad Umar, Ali Nawaz Awan, and Khurram Nawaz, challenging two notifications – one issued by the National Assembly speaker through which their resignations were accepted and the second of ECP in which they had been de-notified.In the petition, they stated that on 11-04-2022, en-masse letters were obtained by PTI from 123 members of the National Assembly, including the petitioners, and submitted accordingly.

“The resignations were forwarded to ECP on 28.07.2022 in terms of Rule 43 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly 2007, whereupon ECP, vide notification dated 29.07.2022, de-notified those eleven MINAs. In doing so the Speaker did not follow the requirements of Article 64 as laid down by the Superior Courts of Pakistan, for acceptance of resignations,” maintained the petitioners.

The IHC decision comes days after the Lahore High Court (LHC) suspended the order of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that denotified the party’s lawmakers elected from Punjab. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf had announced resignations from the National Assembly on April 11 last year, minutes before the election of Shehbaz Sharif as the new prime minister. After the suspension of de-notification order of three more PTI MNAs, the by-polls will be held on 18 NA seats on March 16. The by-polls will be held in the following constituencies:

NA-04 Swat-III, NA-17 Haripur-I, NA-18 Swabi-I, NA-25 Nowshera-I, NA-26 Nowshera-II, NA-32 Kohatm NA-38 D I Khan-I, NA-43 Khyber-I, NA-241 Korangi Karachi-III, NA-242 Karachi East-I, NA-243 Karachi East-II, NA-244 Karachi East-III, NA-247 Karachi South-II, NA-250 Karachi West-III, NA-252 Karachi West-V, NA-254 Karachi Central-II, NA-256 Karachi Central-IV, NA-265 Quetta-II.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-INP