Peshawar High Court suspends NA by-election schedule in KP

PESHAWAR: As election discourse intensified across Pakistan in the last few days, the Peshawar High Court has suspended the schedule of by-elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on National Assembly seats on Friday.

The court's decision came while issuing its reserved judgement in the case against the resignations of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s lawmakers from the National Assembly and the postponement of by-polls.

Resultantly, the court also postponed the by-elections on seats of the parliament's lower house in the province and also suspended the by-polls schedule which were to be held on March 16 and 19.

As the NA Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf accepted resignations from all PTI MNAs including the last batch on January 24, by-elections were scheduled to take place on the aforementioned dates.

The court has issued notices to the parties and has adjourned the case’s hearing till March 7. It should be noted that the by-polls in KP were to be held on 24 seats of the parliament’s lower house.

A day earlier, the Sindh High Court (SHC) issued notices to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the NA speaker and others on a stay application filed by former PTI lawmakers from Karachi against the acceptance of their resignations by the speaker and by-elections announced on their seats.

Last month, the ECP denotified PTI Chairman Imran Khan from six constituencies and declared those seats vacant three of which belong to KP — NA 22 Mardan, NA 24 Charsadda, and NA 31 Peshawar.

ECP suspends denotification of PTI MNAs

The election commission suspended its denotification announcement of 32 PTI MNAs last month. Following the ouster of Khan from the government, PTI lawmakers resigned en masse from the NA.

At first, the resignations of only 11 MNAs were accepted by NA speaker Raja Parvez Ashraf. However, on January 17 and January 20, 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 25, 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.