Peshawar: The Peshawar High Court was approached for the restoration of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly which was dissolved four months ago.
The KP assembly was dissolved in mid-January and a caretaker set-up has been set up in the province for more than four months. Lawyer Saifullah Kakakhil filed the petition, on behalf of Muhammad Farqan Qazi, the stand was taken that the people of the province have been deprived of representation in their absence in the assembly.
He said that the former chief minister had recommended the governor to dissolve the assembly after the instructions of his party chief Imran Khan. He said that Imran Khan has also admitted recently that he was also asked by someone else to dissolve the assemblies.
The lawyer requested the court to restore the assemblies as there are no signs of elections while the people of the province need representation in the House. He said that after the restoration, the majority party should be asked to choose the chief minister and cabinet members to run the affairs of the province. Last month, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf had also approached the Peshawar High Court to hold early elections to the KP Assembly.
The petition filed by former Speaker Mushtaq Ghani on March 24 challenged the announcement of Governor KP Ghulam Ali and the notification of the Election Commission of Pakistan regarding holding the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly elections on October 8 on March 27. The Governor and the Election Commission of Pakistan will announce the schedule of the early elections and cancel the notification to hold the elections on October 8.
The writ petition said that elections cannot be delayed due to law and order or financial challenges as in such cases every government will use it as an excuse to delay elections in future. The KP Governor, Ghulam Ali, in March proposed holding elections for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on October 8, stating that the current law and order situation was not satisfactory. Apart from this, a former PTI MPA had approached the court against the legality of the caretaker government in the province.
