ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) de-notified 35 lawmakers belonging to former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Tuesday after their resignations from the National Assembly were accepted by speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf.
Khan’s party decided to quit the assembly after he was driven out of power in a parliamentary no-confidence vote last April.
The speaker, however, only accepted a handful of resignations while asking PTI lawmakers to visit his chamber individually to assist him in the verification process.
“Consequent upon the acceptance of resignations by the Hon’ble Speaker, National Assembly of Pakistan ... the Election Commission of Pakistan hereby de-notifies the following Members of National Assembly of Pakistan with immediate effect,” the ECP announced in a notification before sharing the names.
Most of the lawmakers mentioned in the list are considered close to the former prime minister, including Murad Saeed, Omar Ayub, Asad Qaiser, Pervaiz Khattak, Sheharyar Afridi, Ali Amin Gandapur, Asad Umar, Hammad Azhar, Amir Dogar, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Zartaj Gul, Ali Haider Zaidi and Qasim Khan Suri.
The denotification comes days after Khan expressed his intent to “test” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif by asking him to prove his majority in the lower house of parliament.
Khan’s statement coincided with media reports that one of Sharif’s coalition partners, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM-P), was disgruntled with the delimitation process in Sindh and wanted the postponement of local government elections in Karachi and Hyderabad.
It was also said that the MQM-P had threatened to quit the government which would have made Sharif lose his majority in the house.
The decision also follows a news conference by PTI vice president Chaudhry Fawad Hussain in the evening wherein he said that his party was sending a delegation to meet with the National Assembly speaker to secure the offices of the leader of opposition, parliamentary leader and public accounts committee.
He maintained, however, that his party had not decided to return to the top legislative body of the country.
Hussain “thanked” the speaker for accepting the resignation of his party lawmakers later in the day in a Twitter post.
He noted “until you accept 70 more resignations, the posts of leader of opposition and parliamentary party will come to Tehreek-e-Insaf,” adding it was also his party’s “right” to hold the public accounts committee.
