NA Speaker summons PTI MPs to verify resignations

ISLAMABAD: National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has summoned PTI lawmakers to verify their resignations from the lower house.

The NA secretariat sent letters to the lawmakers concerned, asking them to get their resignations verified.

The National Assembly’s statement comes after PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry shared that the PTI Core Committee had debated about the party’s return to the lower house but did not make a final decision as of yet.

On the government’s decision to accept the resignations of some individual PTI lawmakers, Fawad said that if individual resignations are accepted, then the party will go to court.

“We all have resigned, everyone’s resignation should be accepted,” said Fawad.

Last week, sources had told Geo News that the coalition government was deliberating whether it should accept the resignations of PTI leaders Fawad Chaudhry, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, and Shireen Mazari in the Parliament.

The coalition parties believe that the three PTI leaders’ resignation should be accepted as they had announced their decision to resign while addressing the lower house of the Parliament. Among the three lawmakers, Mazari is the only one who has been elected on a reserved seat for women from Punjab.

Sources had said that the allied parties have advised that the three leaders’ resignations should be accepted and by-elections should be held in their constituencies.

Sources also said that the PML-N’s allied parties had given Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif the right to decide whether the resignations should be accepted or rejected.

Officials privy to the development said that PM Shehbaz will share his decision on accepting the resignations very soon. It has also been decided that if by-elections are held, then joint candidates will be fielded in the constituencies.

Sources further maintained that apart from the three PTI lawmakers, no other Opposition MNA’s resignation has been verified.

Last month, former deputy speaker of National Assembly Qasim Suri had accepted the resignations of 123 PTI MNAs after they decided to disassociate themselves from the lower house following the ouster of PTI Chairman Imran Khan from the office of the prime minister.

Khan was ousted through a no-confidence motion brought against him by the then joint opposition, a move that the PTI called a “foreign conspiracy” hatched by the United States. The allegation, however, has been categorically denied by the superpower.

After being removed from the office, the former premier asked his MNAs to tender their resignations and refuse to accept the newly elected premier, saying “there can’t be any bigger insult to this country”.

The PTI’s MNAs had tendered their resignations to the deputy speaker hours before the election of Shehbaz Sharif as the new prime minister.

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