Resignations of another 43 PTI MNAs accepted

ISLAMABAD: National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf has accepted the resignations of 43 remaining Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf MNAs.

With the acceptance of 123 resignations, the PTI has been eliminated from the National Assembly, except for dissident members.

The National Assembly Secretariat has so far not given any official word on it, but an official has confirmed the development and said the resignations have been sent to the Election Commission of Pakistan to de-notify the PTI members.

The speaker has already accepted the resignations of 80 members of the PTI and Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Chief of the Awami Muslim League. With the acceptance of another 43 members, the process of accepting the PTI resignations has been completed and now only dissident party members remain in the National Assembly.

Though former prime minister and PTI Chairman Imran Khan has been disqualified from his seat in the Mianwali constituency, he has won from six constituencies in the by-elections of 11 vacant seats of the National Assembly. He has not taken yet an oath from any of the winning seats while another PTI candidate Maulvi Mehmood, who won the election from the seat that fell vacant due to the death of Dr Aamir Liaquat Hussain from Karachi, is yet to take oath. The speaker’s approval comes in the backdrop of the PTI’s U-turn on its resignations. On Monday, the PTI approached the Election Commission of Pakistan that it had withdrawn the resignations and that the commission should not de-notify its members.

According to parliamentary sources, the PTI members’ requests to withdraw their resignations are not by the rules.

The sources in the National Assembly say that the speaker had accepted the resignations of the remaining 43 members on January 22 and sent them to the Election Commission of Pakistan, so email and WhatsApp requests on January 23 were against the rules.

Parliamentary sources say the resignations had been accepted on January 22, so on January 23, the withdrawal requests were ineffective.

The speaker has accepted 113 resignations in the last eight days, while two PTI members Sardar Talib Nakai and Nawaz Alai’s resignations are yet to be accepted for being on leave.

The resignations of PTI members of the National Assembly were approved in four phases: 11 in the first phase, 35, 34, and 43 in the second, third, and fourth phases, respectively.

The Election Commission of Pakistan has not yet issued a notification to de-notify the 43 members of the final phase.

According to the National Assembly Secretariat, Riaz Fatiyana, Sardar Tariq Hussain, Muhammad Yaqub Sheikh, Murtaza Iqbal, Sardar Muhammad Khan Leghari, Haji Imtiaz Chaudhry, Lal Chand, Jawad Hussain, Nosheen Hamid, Manza Hassan, Saima Nadeem, Tashfeen Safdar, Subia Kamal Khan, Zil-i-Huma, Rukhsana Naveed and Ghazala Saifee are among the 43 MNAs whose resignations have been accepted in the last phase.