Acceptance of PTI MNAs’ resignations: NA loses strength to adopt resolution to amend Constitution

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly (NA) has lost the strength to adopt any resolution to amend the Constitution after the ouster of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) members from the House who submitted their resignations on April 10 last year and NA Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf accepted their resignations in four phases.

The announcement of acceptance of the last and final batch came on Tuesday. The aggregate number of legislators has come down to 226 in the House while 228 members constitute two-thirds of the House required for adoption of any amendment in the Constitution. It is understood that Raja Riaz Ahmad, who is a dissident of PTI, would continue to act as leader of the opposition in the NA and will pick up the caretaker prime minister to supervise the next general elections in the country with the consultation of leader of House Shehbaz Sharif on the completion of mandate of incumbent National Assembly later this year.

The PTI wanted to snatch his authority by dislodging him but the scheme has been thwarted through acceptance of resignations of PTI Members of National Assembly (MNAs).

Highly-placed sources of the ECP have indicated that the commission would discuss a strategy for holding the by-polls and allied affairs within a week. It is likely that by-elections would be held just before Ramazan.

Interestingly, NA Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf announced acceptance of resignations of the rest of 43 PTI members on Tuesday, which were tendered by them in April last year immediately after the ouster of Imran Khan through vote of no trust.

It happened just a day after the MNAs asked for withdrawing their resignations. With this, the PTI has disappeared from the lower House of Parliament after Imran proudly announced quitting the House in April for the sake of parting ways with the “filthy system.” The PTI kept begging for return of their resignations in recent days and they knocked the doors of several exalted offices for the purpose.

The NA Speaker office told The News here Tuesday that Raja Pervaiz Ashraf had approved the resignations recently and had already sent a summary recommending their de-notification to the ECP. The total number of PTI members whose resignations have been accepted has reached 124. The approval of the resignations comes a day after at least 45 PTI MPs attempted to meet the NA speaker in order to withdraw their resignations.

Through the move, the party had aimed to appoint one of its members as the leader of the opposition in the NA and another chairman Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in place of Noor Alam Khan, a stubborn legislator from Peshawar.

Asad Umar, Secretary General of the PTI, said Monday they had also informed the NA speaker of the decision to withdraw their resignations via email.

Political observers reminded that Imran Khan had announced to step out of the parliament, dissolve provincial assemblies of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and quit the assemblies of Sindh and Balochistan to force the government to announce general elections in the country by dissolving the National Assembly.

None of his objectives could be achieved. The PTI is yet to announce the schedule for stepping down from the Sindh and Balochistan assemblies. It is unlikely that they would quit these two provincial assemblies.

The PTI is also ruling in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). It hasn’t given any thought of coming out of both legislative assemblies. Its AJK government is already in hot waters where the opposition has completed its home work to dislodge PTI’s prime minister through a vote of no-confidence. Subsequently, the AJK president would also meet the same fate, the sources indicated.