By Naveed Naqvi
ISLAMABAD: Another 35 lawmakers of former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party lost their membership in Parliament on Friday after their resignations were accepted by the speaker of the National Assembly.
The speaker Raja Parvez Ashraf’s move came 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.
“In accordance with Clause (1) of article 64 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, read with Rule 43 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the National Assembly of Pakistan 2007, the Hon’ble Speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan has been pleased to accept the resignations of the following Members of the National Assembly with effect from April 11, 2022, the date when the letters of respective resignations were submitted,” a notification issued by the National Assembly Secretariat said.
It added that copies of the resignations have been forwarded to the Election Commission of Pakistan for further action.
At least 123 parliamentarians of PTI quit the National Assembly en masse after their chief was driven out of power last April in a vote of no-confidence.
But the speaker then did not accept their resignations and said he needed to individually verify if the lawmakers were resigning of their own accord.
In a surprise move, however, Ashraf, a former prime minister, earlier this week accepted long pending resignations of 35 PTI lawmakers, after which the ECP de-notified them. On Friday, another 35 resignations were accepted.
The resignations mean the PTI will be challenged in terms of numbers if it asks Prime Minister Sharif to seek a trust vote from parliament.
The speaker has so far accepted 81 resignations of PTI lawmakers apparently to thwart the party’s move to return to the lower house to get its opposition leader appointed, analysts said.
As per the constitution, PM Sharif is also bound to consult the opposition leader to finalize a nominee for the caretaker prime minister before the elections, which are scheduled to be held in the latter half of this year. The current opposition leader, Raja Riaz, is a PTI dissident.
Khan, who blames his ouster on a Washington-backed “foreign conspiracy,” has been campaigning for snap polls in the country. Earlier this month, Khan’s PTI also dissolved the two provincial assemblies, in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where his party rules, in a bid to force the government to call early polls, which are otherwise scheduled for late this year.
According to the country’s constitution, new elections must be conducted within three months after a provincial assembly has been dissolved and if the upper house is unable to install an interim setup.
The PTI said it would not accept any caretaker setup installed without their consultation to hold general elections. On Friday, 76 PTI lawmakers gathered in Islamabad for a parliamentary party meeting and later visited the speaker’s chamber to confirm their resignations.
But the speaker was not available. The PTI still has around 50 lawmakers in the assembly whose resignations have yet to be accepted.
“This is a joke. We condemn it,” Asad Qaiser, PTI lawmaker and former National Assembly speaker, told reporters about the acceptance of resignations of another 35 fellow lawmakers. “If they think they will bring in their caretaker government, we will not accept their caretaker government at all.”
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