PMLN challenges Punjab PA speaker election in LHC

LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Wasiq Qayyum Abbasi was elected as Deputy Speaker Punjab Assembly unopposed on Saturday, while Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) challenged the election of Punjab Assembly speaker in the Lahore High Court (LHC), naming the newly-elected speaker Sibtain Khan and others as respondents in the petition.

The petition, filed through Mansoor Usman Awan, stated, “Legal requirements were not fulfilled” in the election process, held a day earlier.

The petition was fixed for hearing, and it was noted that a two-member bench would hear the case on Monday, August 1.

The petition stated that the PA speaker election process should be conducted through secret ballot and that mentioning serial numbers on ballot papers was a “violation of the Constitution”.

The petitioner demanded a re-election of the speaker of the provincial assembly, declaring yesterday’s polling “null and void”.

Speaking to the media, PMLN leader Atta Tarar reiterated the petitioner’s demand for a re-election.

The Punjab Assembly elected PTI’s Sibtain Khan, who was a joint candidate of his party and the PMLQ, as the new speaker on Friday after the seat fell vacant following the election of former office-bearer Pervaiz Elahi as the chief minister of Punjab on July 26.

MPA Rana Mashhood said the party had made a request to the panel of chair not to accept the election. “The party that habitually lies must now be made accountable,” he said, in an apparent reference to the PTI.

He said that no proceedings of the assembly should take place until a verdict was announced in the case. Wasiq Qayyum was elected as the deputy speaker unopposed as no other candidate had filed nomination papers for the post. The seat fell vacant after Dost Muhammad Mazari was removed through a no-confidence motion, submitted by the PTI on Saturday.