ISLAMABAD: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday declared the denotification of more than 70 lawmakers of former prime minister Imran Khan’s party void, paving the way for their return to parliament and posing a challenge for the coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had quit the National Assembly en masse soon after he was driven from power in a parliamentary no-trust vote last April, but Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, a Sharif ally, said he needed to individually verify if the lawmakers were resigning of their own accord.

In a surprise move in January, Ashraf accepted the long pending resignations of more than 70 PTI lawmakers and Pakistan’s election regulator subsequently denotified them, virtually wiping out the presence of Khan’s party from parliament.

PTI lawmakers later decided to withdraw the resignations and filed petitions against their denotification in the LHC, which today, Friday, declared the denotification of 72 parliamentarians of Khan’s party null and void, Pakistan’s Geo News channel reported.

“They had withdrawn their resignations, therefore, the speaker does not have any right to denotify them. The Election Commission of Pakistan’s denotification after the speaker’s decision was also challenged in this case,” Barrister Ali Zafar, a senior lawyer representing the PTI, told reporters in Lahore.

“The court has just announced the verdicts, petitions have been accepted which would mean that the speaker’s and the Election Commission of Pakistan’s notifications to denotify PTI members from the National Assembly have been declared void.”

Zafar said the court had also issued directives for the speaker to make a decision after individually verifying the resignations.

“Now our MNAs will appear before the speaker... will withdraw their resignations by appearing before [the speaker] during the inquiry,” Zafar added.

The ECP had announced by-elections on some of these parliamentary seats in March, but later postponed them.

The LHC’s decision to declare the denotification of PTI lawmakers void adds a new twist to the ongoing political tug-of-war in the South Asian country, where Khan, arguably the nation’s most popular politician, is squarely pitted against the Sharif government and the all-powerful army.

It remains to be seen whether Khan will direct his party’s lawmakers to return to parliamentary politics.

Analysts say the PTI, which initially threatened the en masse resignations to force early general elections, now wants to maintain its presence in the national legislature so it can be part of the consultative process for the appointment of the interim setup ahead of the general elections later this year. The party is eying the leader of the opposition slot, who has a direct say in choosing the interim government.