LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday suspended Election Commission of Pakistan’s notification of de-notifying PTI Members of National Assembly from Punjab, and staying by-elections on their seats. The LHC also directed the NA Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf to submit his reply till March 7 in this case of accepting resignations of PTI MNAs.
It may be recalled that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had moved to the Lahore High Court on February 17 against the acceptance of 70 MNAs’ resignations, by NA Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf.
The PTI MNAs, including Fawad Chaudhry, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pervaiz Khattak and others challenged the acceptance of their resignations as MNAs by NA speaker.
Making the NA speaker, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and others respondents in their petition, over 70 PTI MNAs, including Fawad Chaudhry, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pervaiz Khattak and Asad Umar, told the Lahore High Court (LHC) that the speaker did not listen to their viewpoints before accepting their resignations. And the ECP, too, did not waste a minute and de-notified them, read the petition.
The petitioner pleaded with LHC to nullify the decision of speaker Raja Pervaiz Asharaf and the de-notifying order of Election Commission of Pakistan.
“Therefore, it is prayed to the court to declare the acceptance of PTI lawmakers’ resignations null and void,” the petition read.
