WEB DESK
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) legislators resigned en-masse from their seats in the National Assembly following what they call “foreign-funded regime change.”
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Of the 123 resignations of PTI MNAs, Speaker of National Assembly Raja Pervaiz Ashraf accepted the 11 resignations and forwarded those to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
Subsequently, the ECP de-notified these members and announced by-elections on the vacant seats.
Later on, PTI MNA Shakor Shad who was elected from NA-246 Karachi approached the Islamabad High Court (IHC) claiming that he had not resigned from the seat. The party suspended his membership for going against the party line.
Following this, the court suspended the ECP notification de-notifying PTI MNAs.
Now the PTI MNAs, whose resignations were accepted, have approached the IHC.
The petition, filed on Wednesday, reads that the resignations were purely a political move and can not be treated as resignations in the eye of law.
The resignations were “conditional upon and subject to all the 123 members, who had sent the letters of resignations, being de-seated as a whole and jointly,” the petition said.
The PTI leaders said that the resignations were meant to force the government to fix a date for early elections.
The petition further maintained that the speaker accepted the resignations of 11 MNAs without following the procedure laid out by the Supreme Court.
The PTI also submitted the transcript of an alleged leak of audio of the prime minister and some of the cabinet members discussing the resignations of the PTI MNAs and seeking direction from PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif.
The court has admitted the petition for the hearing. Chief Justice Athar Minallah will hear the case on Thursday.
