IHC suspends ECP's notice denotifying three PTI MNAs

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) stopped on Wednesday the Election Commission of Pakistan's (ECP) from conducting by-election in the federal capital while suspending its order denotifying Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MNAs Asad Umar, Ali Nawaz Awan and Raja Khurram Shahzad Nawaz.

The three PTI leaders had filed a petition challenging the ECP's notice, issued after the National Assembly (NA) Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf notified the electoral body of their resignation approval.

The NA speaker had accepted the en masse resignations of the PTI lawmakers following PTI Chairman Imran Khan's ouster as the prime minister last year.

Today's hearing

PTI lawmakers' lawyer Ali Zafar appeared before the IHC at the outset of the hearing conducted by Justice Aamer Farooq.

While suspending the ECP's order, the court also suspended Speaker Ashraf's notification accepting the resignations of Umar, Awan and Nawaz.

During the hearing, the court said while addressing Barrister Zafar that he had earlier complained of the resignations not being accepted and now he was saying that they were "accepted wrongly".

At this, the lawyer said that the electoral body and the speaker had issued the notification.

"Have you challenged these notifications?" inquired the court.

At this, Zafar said that his clients want to be a part of the assembly again.

The IHC also issued notices to the parties and sought their replies.

The resignation saga

In April last year, the party's lawmakers resigned en masse from the NA after the PTI chief was ousted from power through a no-confidence motion.

At first, the resignations of only 11 MNAs were accepted by the NA speaker. However, on January 17 and January 20 this year, the resignations of 34 and 35 more PTI MNAs were accepted respectively.

Several MNAs then withdrew their resignations and requested the speaker not to accept them. However, on January 22, the NA speaker accepted the last batch of resignations.

Subsequently, the 43 MNAs took their grievance to the Lahore High Court (LHC), which on February 8 suspended the ECP's orders.

Later, several other PTI MNAs approached the LHC for similar relief. The court, however, only instructed the ECP to suspend the denotification of PTI MNAs from Punjab.

The electoral body on February 21 — in line with the LHC's order — suspended its denotification announcement of 32 PTI MNAs. Moreover, it also halted the by-polls in those constituencies.