IHC suspends ECP, NA Speaker’s notifications to denotify 3 PTI MNAs

ISLAMABAD    -    The Islamabad High Court (IHC) Wednesday suspended the Election Commission of Paki­stan’s (ECP) order to denotify Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmakers Asad Umar, Ali Nawaz Awan and Raja Khurram Shahzad Nawaz. A single bench of IHC comprising Chief Justice of IHC Justice Aamer Farooq conducted hearing of the petition moved by three Members of National As­sembly (MNAs) of Pakistan Teh­rik-e-Insaf (PTI) elected from the federal capital challenging accep­tance of their resignation. The IHC bench also suspended Speaker National Assembly Raja Pervez Ashraf’s notification of accepting their resignations while it further barred the ECP from conducting by-polls in these constituencies. During the hearing, the IHC Chief Justice remarked that earlier the PTI leaders were upset over non-acceptance of their resignations and now they were voicing against it after these were approved. He also asked that have you only chal­lenged the notification. Barrister Ali Zafar, who represented the PTI leaders in the case, told the court that his clients wanted to return to the assembly. He also informed the court about a decision of the Lahore High Court (LHC) regard­ing suspension of de-notification of PTI MNAs’ from Punjab. He said two other petitions of the PTI law­makers were also pending in the LHC. Later, the bench suspended the ECP and Speaker NA notifica­tions and deferred the hearing till March 28 for further proceedings. The PTI MNAs, including former finance minister Asad Umar, Ali Nawaz Awan and Khurram She­hzad had filed the petition in the IHC through his counsel Barris­ter Ali Zafar and Barrister Gohar Khan. They cited the federal gov­ernment, Speaker National As­sembly and secretary NA and the ECP as respondents in the case and requested the court to sus­pend the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECPs) and speaker na­tional assembly’s notification. In the petition, they stated that on 11-04-2022, en-masse resigna­tions were obtained by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf from 123 mem­bers of the National Assembly, including the petitioners, and sub­mitted accordingly. They added that the petitioners acted on the directions of the party and for the political objective only of arriving at an agreement with the opposi­tion parties for holding of fresh elections so that a new govern­ment may be formed with the real mandate of the people of Pakistan, and the nation could be relieved of the current impasse.