NA session put off from 27th till 31st

ISLAMABAD:

The session of the National Assembly has been rescheduled once again -- now it would be held on January 31 instead of January 27 -- as the ruling coalition tried to buy some more time to delay the acceptance of the resignations of the PTI MNAs.

A notification has been issued, according to which the NA speaker using his authority has postponed the session of the lower house from January 27 till January 31.

On Sunday, the Senate session was adjourned because of a short-circuit in the Parliament House.

The authorities, after hectic efforts, were able to repair the fault, which had caused the short-circuit.

Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani had personally monitored the repair work and issued directions to ensure that such a fault did not occur again.

Both the upper and lower houses would now continue as per their schedule.

During a gap of three days, a thorough electrical audit was carried out using sensitive gadgets and the collective wiring.

The aim of this exercise was to ensure that there would be no more electrical faults in parliament.

The NA speaker and Senate chairman had said that it was imperative to protect human lives and that was why it was necessary to use all resources at their disposal to fix any electrical faults in parliament.

It had surfaced a day earlier that the NA speaker had accepted the resignations of 43 more PTI MNAs -- a series that started when it had announced its return to the lower house so that it could take back the posts of the leader of the opposition and parliamentary party leader.

Sardar Talib Naki and Prince Nawaz Allai, the two PTI MNAs who followed the party policy in the NA, were spared because of  their leave requests.

Earlier, the PTI leaders sent a request to the speaker through an email saying that they were withdrawing their resignations.

They also informed the ECP that the speaker and the NA secretariat had been informed about their decision.

The resignations of the PTI MNAs were approved in four phases from July last year -- 11 in the first phase; 35 each in the second and third phases while 43 in the fourth one.

The lawmakers had resigned from the lower house of parliament in protest against the ouster of their party chief Imran Khan as the prime minister through a vote of confidence in April 2022.

The NA sources said that the speaker had accepted the resignations of the remaining 43 members on January 22 and sent them to the ECP, so the email and WhatsApp requests on January 23 were against the rules.

The resignations were accepted on January 22, so the withdrawal requests on January 23 were ineffective, they added.

After the approval of 43 more resignations, their total number has reached 124 -- 123 PTI MNAs and one of Sheikh Rashid, the chief of the Awami Muslim League.