The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday suspended the notification regarding the acceptance of resignation of PTI’s Member of the National Assembly (MNA) Abdul Shakoor Shad and instructed him to attend the assembly session. Chief Justice Athar Minallah heard the petition filed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmaker against acceptance of his resignation by the NA speaker as MNA. The court issued a notice to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and sought its comments in two weeks.
The petitioner’s lawyer adopted the stance that his client had not tendered resignation from the NA membership. A computer operator had typed 123 resignations on the party letter head, and the NA speaker accepted only 11 of them. The IHC suspended an Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) notification for the by-election in the National Assembly constituency of NA-246 in Karachi.
Abdul Shakoor Shad announced to rescind his resignation, which he said was only meant to express solidarity with PTI Chief Imran Khan in a petition filed before the IHC. The petition stated that 123 resignations were typed by a computer operator and the PTI MNAs were made to sign them in the name of ‘party discipline’, to show solidarity with Imran Khan and for political purposes. IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah heard the petition on Friday and sent notices to ECP and the National Assembly Secretariat seeking their replies.
Justice Minallah said that after Shad’s petition ‘all of PTI’s resignations’ had become doubtful. Wasn’t Shad called for the confirmation of the resignation? the justice asked Shad’s counsel replied that the PTI MNA was invited by the NA speaker for the confirmation of his resignation on May 30 but he failed to make an appearance due to being ill. However, Abdul Shakoor Shad continued to attend meetings of the standing committees, the lawyer said.
The court suspended the ECP notification that denotified Shad as MNA and told the petitioner to attend National Assembly proceedings. In July, Speaker National Assembly Raja Pervaiz Ashraf approved 11 out of 123 resignations from the PTI MNAs. The resignations were submitted by the PTI en mass in April when Imran Khan was ousted from power. On August 5, the ECP announced by-elections on nine general seats that fell vacant after the resignations were accepted. Two others were reserved seats. Shortly after the elections were announced, PTI declared that Imran Khan will contest the election from all nine seats. In NA-246 PPP awarded the ticket to Nabeel Gabol.
