ISLAMABAD - The PTI will observe “Thanksgiving Day” on Saturday to celebrate the election tribunals’ orders of re-elections in three national assembly constituencies.
A Multan election tribunal yesterday ordered re-election in NA-154 constituency of Lodhran, three days after a Lahore panel annulled the victory of national assembly speaker over alleged irregularities. Earlier this year, Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique’s membership from the national assembly was cancelled after an election tribunal annulled results of the NA-125 election and ordered a re-poll.
“PTI Chairman Imran Khan will address workers at Lalik Chowk in Lahore on Saturday evening,” information secretary said in a statement. Khan also congratulated his party members on the verdict in favour of his party.
“I congratulate the whole nation and to those who participated in the sit-in last year,” Khan said in a statement issued by the Central Media Cell PTI in a statement said that the chairman PTI had showed his happiness on the decision of tribunal in NA-154.
He added, “The party would celebrate Saturday as ‘the day of thanks’.”
The party called the verdict “hat-trick by Mr Khan” the back-to-back verdicts of re-elections in the three constituencies of national assemblies.
These are among four constituencies on which Khan had demanded probe to test his claims about electoral rigging. The PTI as part of its efforts for getting all the four members of Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) removed has started contacting political parties.
A committee of PTI headed by Shah Mehmood Qureshi Wednesday called on Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah, the Opposition Leader in National Assembly over the matter.
Khurshid Shah while talking to the media after the meeting reiterated his stance that the ECP members had failed to ensure free and fair elections. He said that the ECP members should step down.
“The institution of ECP has become controversial due to the alleged role of its four members and the only way to end this controversy is that the members should voluntarily resign,” he said.
Shah said that his party endorsed the step taken by the PTI that the members should step down and this was PTI’s right demand.
Responding to a question, he said that his party has no objection on the incumbent Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and the secretary ECP, as they took over after 2013 elections. “We’ve no problem with them...what we want is free and transparent elections in future,” he added.
Shah however, made it clear that PPP would not support the sit-in call given by the PTI chairman outside the ECP building as a last resort, if they fail to remove the ECP members.