Speaker of the National Assembly, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, stated on Thursday that he has not yet received the order from the Lahore High Court (LHC) regarding the suspension of denotification of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmakers. In a video posted on the National Assembly’s official Twitter account, the speaker made it clear that they will take any future course of action only after they have received the order. He added that they have only heard from media reports that they have been made a party to the case, but they have not received any official notice yet.
It was in April last year that PTI had tendered en masse resignations in protest after Imran Khan was voted out of office as the Prime Minister. While the then deputy speaker Qasim Suri had accepted the resignations, the current Speaker Ashraf had restarted the process of accepting the resignations one by one, asking each member to confirm their resignation in person. The resignations of the last group of PTI MNAs were accepted in January, but the lawmakers later claimed that they had withdrawn their request and had never confirmed the resignation in person.
The LHC, on Wednesday, suspended the denotification by the speaker and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and has sought replies from the concerned authorities.
