The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday upheld the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) order regarding the disqualification of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) legislators Asad Umar, Ali Nawaz Awan and Raja Khurram Shahzad Nawaz. The letter was suspended.
National Assembly (NA) Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf has accepted the resignations of the PTI MLAs who resigned en masse after the removal of PTI Chairman Imran Khan from the Prime Ministership last year.
The Speaker had sent a notice to the Election Commission to de-notify the MNAs, but the three PTI leaders filed a petition challenging the ECP’s notification.
The case was heard by Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Amir Farooq. Lawyer Ali Zafar represented three PTI leaders Umar, Awan and Nawaz in the court.
The court restrained the ECP from holding by-elections in Islamabad and also suspended Speaker Ashraf’s notification accepting the resignations of party legislators.
During the hearing, the court quoted PTI’s lawyer as saying, “Earlier you said that the resignations are not being accepted and now you are saying that they were accepted wrongly.”
On this, Barrister Zafar said that the Election Commission and the Speaker issued a notification.
“Have you challenged these reports?” The court inquired.
On this, Zafar said that his client wants to be part of the assembly again.
The IHC also issued notices to the parties and sought their response.
The resignation saga
In April last year, after the PTI chief was removed from power by a no-confidence motion, the party’s legislators resigned en masse from the National Assembly.
At first, only 11 MNAs’ resignations were accepted by Speaker National Assembly. However, on January 17 and January 20 this year, the resignations of 34 and 35 more PTI MNAs were accepted respectively.
Several MNAs subsequently withdrew their resignations and requested the Speaker not to accept them. However, on January 22, the Speaker of the National Assembly accepted the last batch of resignations.
Subsequently, 43 MNAs took their complaint to the Lahore High Court (LHC), which suspended the ECP orders on February 8.
Later, several other PTI MNAs approached the Lahore High Court for similar relief. However, the court directed the ECP to suspend the de-notification of PTI MNAs from Punjab only.
On February 21, the election body suspended the de-notification of 32 PTI MNAs – as per the LHC’s order. Moreover, it also stopped the by-elections in these constituencies.
