SHC stays by-polls on nine NA seats

Court gives relief to PTI, suspends ECP notification until March 25

KARACHI:

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Tuesday issued an injunction on the by-elections in nine National Assembly constituencies of Karachi till March 25.

The injunction was issued by a two-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Ahmed Ali Shaikh, on the petitions against the acceptance of resignations of nine MNAs of PTI.

PTI Sindh President Ali Zaidi appeared before the court along with a team of lawyers led by Shahab Imam Advocate who took the plea that the high courts of Lahore, Peshawar, Islamabad, and Balochistan had granted injunctions on similar petitions.

The ECP had ordered by-polls following phase-wise acceptance of resignations of PTI lawmakers. The party legislators had tendered en masse resignations protesting the ouster of former premier Imran Khan by a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly in April last year. PTI’s Qasim Suri, who was the deputy speaker at the time, had accepted the resignations.

Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, who became the speaker after the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) coalition came to power, announced that the acceptance of the en masse resignations was illegal as due process was not followed. It resulted in a phase-wise review and acceptance of resignations.

The NA speaker had maintained that he could only accept resignations that were individually verified with him - something the PTI unsuccessfully attempted to challenge in various courts.

However, he did not officially begin accepting the resignations until January, triggering a strong reaction from the PTI who claimed foul play. The party contended that it was now the speaker who had not followed the requirements of accepting the resignation and that several had later retracted their resignations as well.

The matter has been brought before high courts in Islamabad, Lahore and Balochistan and thus far the PTI has been successful in gaining relief and having by-polls delayed.

Continuing its winning streak, the PTI managed to convince the SHC to suspend ECP notification calling for polls on nine vacated NA seats on March 16. The notification is to remain suspended until March 25.

After the hearing, PTI Sindh president and former federal minister Ali Zaidi claimed that the resignations were accepted only because the government wished to cherrypick the leader of the opposition in the lower house.

“The resignations were tendered on April 11 and the speaker accepted them on January 17”, he censured, “the speaker accepted resignations predating his own oath [as speaker] only when it came to the selection of the leader of the opposition”.

Zaidi further said that “matters of national significance should not be decided to satisfy individual egos”.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2023.