Farooq Naeem—AFP
Lawmakers of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday appeared to justify National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf’s refusal to accept their resignations en masse, as 10 of them filed a petition before the Islamabad High Court (IHC) claiming their resignations had been a political ploy and were not issued voluntarily.
All 10 petitioners are senior leaders of the PTI who have repeatedly issued public statements claiming their resignations should be accepted and that they stand by the decision of their chief, Imran Khan. However, in the petition filed before the IHC, they have rebutted their earlier narrative, maintaining that their resignations cannot be accepted, as they were a “political” tool and were not voluntary under law.
Filed by Ali Muhammad Khan; Fazal Muhammad Khan; Shaukat Ali; Fakhar Zaman Khan; Farrukh Habib; Ijaz Shah; Jamil Ahmad Khan; Muhammad Akram; Shireen Mazari; and Shandana Gulzar, the petition suggests the PTI is reversing its earlier stance of boycotting the National Assembly, which would also lead to the acceptance of the legitimacy of the incumbent government.
Claiming—without any legal basis—that the resignation was subject to all the 123 members of the National Assembly belonging to PTI resigning and being de-seated jointly and as a whole, the petition claims Ashraf never personally verified the resignations. However, the PTI has repeatedly boycotted attempts by Ashraf to verify the resignations, with senior leader Chaudhry Fawad Hussain even claiming that “there was no need” after the resignations had been accepted—also without verification—by then-deputy speaker Qasim Suri.
Ignoring Ashraf’s attempts, the petition claims he did not undertake his “constitutional duty” to verify each individual resignation before accepting them and directing the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to de-seat them. “The resignations, being en masse, cannot be treated as resignations in the eyes of the law being not voluntary in law but en masse based on political considerations only for the purposes of forcing elections,” it states, adding that “unless all 123 members, who had sent resignations, were to be de-seated together, the letter was not intended to be effective nor could be valid in law.”
The petition further claims that the speaker’s acceptance of 12 resignations was an “unconstitutional act” because he did not summon them to clarify the circumstances of their resignation. It also refers to an audio leak from last month in which Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and several members of his cabinet can be heard discussing the issue of resignations. Maintaining that the veracity of the conversation has not been denied by the government, the petition claims it proves the resignations were not properly processed.
The petitioners have requested the IHC to direct the NA speaker to summon “112 MNAs” and the 10 petitioners for an inquiry into whether their resignations were “voluntary and genuine.” It said that until this process had been fulfilled, the de-seating of the petitioners should be set aside. The case would now be heard tomorrow (Thursday) by IHC CJ Athar Minallah.
This isn’t the first attempt by the PTI to contest the phased acceptance of its lawmakers’ resignations. Last month, the IHC had dismissed a similar plea filed by PTI leader Asad Umar that had called for all resignations to be accepted together.