File photo. Aamir Qureshi—AFP
Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial on Thursday once again urged Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf MNAs to return to the National Assembly while hearing the party’s petition against the piecemeal acceptance of resignations from the Lower House of Parliament.
“People have elected [lawmakers] for five years,” he remarked during the hearing. “The party should play its role in Parliament. Playing a due role in Parliament is the actual obligation,” he said, noting that an earlier Islamabad High Court (IHC) ruling had already established the legal reasoning for NA Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf accepting resignations in phases.
The two-member bench, also comprising Justice Ayesha Malik, observed that any court interference in the NA speaker’s authority could affect Article 69 of the Constitution, which restricts the court’s jurisdiction to exercise authority on a member or officer of Parliament with respect to the functions of regulating parliamentary proceedings or conducting business. It directed the PTI’s lawyer, Faisal Chaudhry, to “satisfy the court as to what was lacking in the high court’s order” on the acceptance of resignations.
In response, the lawyer said then-deputy speaker Qasim Suri had accepted the resignations of all 123 PTI MNAs and there was no reason to re-verify them. To this, the CJP remarked that Suri’s decision appeared to be in the same vein as his ruling on the no-confidence motion—which he had dismissed without allowing it to proceed to vote until the SC had stepped in.
Justice Malik, meanwhile, noted that Suri’s acceptance had not mention the name of any lawmaker, adding that tendering a resignation was an individual, not group act.
The CJP then advised the PTI to “return to the National Assembly,” suggesting that politicking amidst devastating floods was not in the interest of the public. “They [victims] have neither water to drink nor food to eat,” he said, adding the party should also consider the country’s economic situation. Questioning if the PTI was aware of how much it would cost the exchequer to conduct by-elections on 123 NA seats, he said IHC CJ Athar Minallah had issued his judgement after “deeply analyzing the law.”
The bench then directed the lawyer to return to his client and seek fresh instructions on how to proceed. In response, Chaudhry argued that only one PTI lawmaker had publicly distanced themselves from their resignation. However, the court maintained that the PTI had another chance to establish its case and adjourned the hearing for an indefinite period.
Following the hearing, PTI leader Chaudhry Fawad Hussain criticized the CJP’s concern about the expense of by-elections. “The SC has no idea that Pakistan has faced a loss of $5 billion till now as a result of the regime change operation,” he said in a posting on Twitter.
Case history
The PTI’s petition has urged the Supreme Court to set aside the IHC’s order and direct the NA speaker to accept all 123 resignations of PTI lawmakers. Claiming that Ashraf has no authority to “sit over” the resignations, it described the IHC’s decision as “vague, cursory and against the law,” arguing the court had not addressed legal and constitutional questions.
On April 11, the PTI had resigned en masse from the National Assembly following Imran Khan’s ouster as prime minister through a vote of no-confidence. While then-deputy speaker Suri had claimed to accept all the resignations prior to resigning himself, Ashraf had said the laid-out procedure was not followed and decided to verify all resignations individually. In July, he accepted the resignations of just 11 lawmakers.
The PTI challenged the move on Aug. 1, but its petition was dismissed by the IHC on Sept. 6.