Former MPA moves PHC against caretaker govt

PESHAWAR: A former member of the Khyber Pakhtun- khwa Assembly from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Friday moved the Peshawar High Court (PHC) to declare the caretaker government illegal.

Former MPA from Peshawar Fazal Ilahi filed a writ petition in the PHC. In the petition, he took the plea that the caretaker government in KP had been illegally installed since day one. The writ petition asked the court to declare the government and its functions illegal.

“Whenever a caretaker setup is installed, it first announces a date for the polls and then starts functioning. The incumbent caretakers have yet to announce any date for the elections,” said Fazal Ilahi after filing the writ. He argued that the caretaker government had lost the legal ground to rule after the completion of the 90 days since the dissolution of the KP assembly. The PTI also moved the PHC recently for early elections in KP.

Mushtaq Ghani, speaker of the dissolved KP Assembly, through a petition filed last month challenged the announcement by Governor Ghulam Ali and the Election Commission of Pakistan’s notification about holding of elections in the province on October 8. It requested the court to direct the governor and the ECP to announce a schedule for early polls and cancel the notification.