File photo of PTI leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday decided to once again approach the Supreme Court for verification of its lawmakers’ resignations after alleging that National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf was delaying the process.
Just last week, PTI chief Imran Khan had announced at a public rally that his party’s MNAs had decided to return to the National Assembly to verify their resignations in a bid to trigger snap elections. Explaining the decision, PTI leader Chaudhry Fawad Hussain had claimed that the vacated seats in the NA, coupled with the dissolution of the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkwha assemblies, would require elections in more than 500 constituencies, which could not be achieved through by-polls.
Subsequently, PTI Parliamentary Leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi had announced that he had written a letter to Ashraf seeking a time for the party MNAs to verify their resignations. The party had then further claimed that it would appear in Parliament during its session on Thursday (today) and verify all resignations en masse.
However, this entire process came to naught on Wednesday, with the party now claiming that it had decided to once again approach the Supreme Court, as it believed the speaker was deliberately seeking to delay the process and not accept their resignations. The PTI has alleged that Ashraf has gone on leave to avoid verifying the resignations.
Speaking with daily Dawn, PTI spokesman Senator Shibli Faraz claimed it was inappropriate for the speaker to require the party’s MNAs to verify their resignations individually—though this is a constitutional requirement—as this was akin to “humiliating” them. He also claimed this was not a ‘U-turn,’ as mass resignations was part of his party’s strategy to trigger fresh elections.
The matter of the PTI’s resignations has already come under discussion in the Supreme Court during hearings on various petitions, with judges often observing that the party should reconsider its stance, as it was not serving the interests of constituents who elected them to Parliament.
According to observers, the party’s decision might also be motivated by the current situation in Punjab, where its bid to dissolve the provincial assembly has been blocked by the governor directing Chief Minister Parvez Elahi to seek a vote of confidence—and the opposition has filed a separate motion of no-confidence. Without that dissolution, the party’s strategy for “mass vacancies” cannot be achieved and it is now trying to “save face” by further delaying its own bid to get the resignations verified.
The issue of the PTI lawmakers’ resignations has been pending since April, when then-deputy speaker Qasim Suri accepted 123 resignations without any verification. After Ashraf took oath of office later in the same month, he reopened the resignations and sought to individually verify them as per law. In various media interactions, he has alleged that he has been approached by several PTI lawmakers who claim they were pressured into resigning and do not wish for their resignations to be accepted.
Thus far, he has only accepted the resignations of 11 PTI lawmakers.