ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday removed administrative objections from the petition filed against acceptance of resignations of its Members National Assembly (MNAs) in ‘piecemeal’.

A day earlier, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) acting chief justice Aamer Farooq heard the arguments of the petitioner’s counsel on objections.

He instructed the petitioner, PTI’s General Secretary Asad Umar, to remove the objections raised by the registrar office that the petitioner did not produce authority letter of the MNAs.

PTI cited Speaker National Assembly, Election Commission of Pakistan, Secretary Cabinet Division and ex Deputy Speaker Qasim Khan Suri as respondents.

The petition stated that after the ‘regime change operation’, PTI leadership decided to tender resignation from the National Assembly since it was seeking “fresh mandate” from the people of Pakistan.

It said that in pursuant to the decision of a meeting of the Parliamentary Party held in the Parliament House on April 11, 123 MNAs tendered resignations which were accepted by the deputy speaker.

However, the newly-elected Speaker NA Raja Pervaiz Ashraf withheld these resignations and did not forward it to the ECP on the pretext of “so called verification of the resignation”.

“Now after the lapse of around three and a half months, NA Speaker approved resignations of only 11 MNAs of the PTI” and forwarded them to the ECP which has denotified the lawmakers, said the petition.

“The impugned act of the so called verification of resignation of PTI MNAs conducted by the present speaker of the National Assembly and his purported approval of the resignations and forwarding the same to the ECP in a piecemeal manner, despite the fact that all the 123 resignations of the PTI MNA s had already been accepted on April 11 by the then speaker, as well as the impugned act of the ECP to denotify the PTI Members in the piecemeal manner, are unsustainable,” the petition added.

It requested the court to direct the Speaker NA to accord approval to all the PTI’s MNAs resignations.

The petition further requested that the direction be given to the ECP to de-notify these members en masse.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2022