The National Assembly on Sunday announced a clear policy regarding the confirmation of resignations of the PTI members, according to which, every party MNA had to personally confirm his resignation.
The NA spokesperson stated that a statement was provided to the letter sent by PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi on December 22 and that the PTI’s request for a combined presence and confirmation of resignations from their respective seats is being considered once again.
The NA letter states that the PTI MNAs will be contacted to confirm the resignations and that each member must confirm his resignation in person.
The NA Secretariat said that there was “no way” the resignations of the PTI lawmakers could be verified collectively, which had been pending with the speaker despite a lapse of several months and repeated requests from the party leadership to accept them.
On April 11, two days after party chairman Imran Khan was removed as prime minister by a no-confidence vote, 123 PTI MNAs resigned together.
On April 17, however, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, the newly elected NA Speaker, issued the assembly secretariat orders to handle the resignations of the PTI legislators again and present them to him so that they could be treated as per law.
The 22nd speaker of the assembly’s decision was taken amid claims and rumors that several PTI MPs were prepared to resign and were sending out signals that their resignations should not be accepted.
Later in June, the ruling coalition developed a plan for handling the mass resignations of PTI legislators from the legislature and decided to move through with step acceptance. As a result, the NA speaker accepted 11 of the 123 resignations.
Around 30 members of the former ruling party did not want to leave the legislature, according to parliamentary sources, who added that the legislators may meet with the NA speaker directly to prevent the resignations from being accepted.
The resignations of 123 PTI MNAs were later declared “suspicious” by the Islamabad High Court (IHC), which also suspended one of the 11 accepted resignations, after learning that the lawmakers were not invited before the NA speaker in their personal capacities.
The speaker also had repeatedly pushed the PTI legislators to reapply for office, stating he would not accept any resignations from them unless he was “satisfied” that they had not been forced to do so.
In his letter, Qureshi had requested Ashraf to set a time within a week for the formal verification of the resignations of party members, who had resigned back in April this year.
On December 28, the PTI was supposed to appear in the lower house to confirm the resignations of its members.
In the NA letter, the party’s possible return to parliament was welcomed. However, it was also stated that after consultation with the speaker, senior parliamentarians, and constitutional experts, an agreement was reached that en masse verifications were nonetheless “impossible”.
“Every member of the NA will have to personally confirm his resignation,” the letter read, adding that the lower house would be convened under Paragraph (B) of Sub-Rule 43 of the Rules of Procedure, 2007 for the confirmation of their resignations.
It said that the letter was written on May 23 to confirm the resignations submitted on April 11, giving a deadline of June 6 to 10 to confirm the resignations.
The letter said that although being formally invited, no PTI member showed up at the NA to register their resignation.
In the letter, the speaker stated that each PTI member would receive a call to confirm their resignation.
