Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial on Wednesday asked why the Election Commission of Pakistan was consulting with the governor on dates for the Punjab Assembly elections as the court heard petitions filed by dissident PTI MPAs against their disqualification.
The ECP had disqualified 25 dissident MPAs of the PTI on May 20, 2022 on the grounds that they had voted for PML-N’s Hamza Shehbaz in the election for Punjab chief minister against the party line and defected.
The disqualified MPAs then petitioned the Supreme Court against the move and the ECP through Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja, PTI chairman Imran Khan and the PTI’s parliamentary leader in Punjab before it was dissolved, Sibtain Khan, were cited as respondents in the petition.
A three-member Supreme Court bench, consisting of the CJP, Justice Ayesha Malik and Justice Athar Minallah, heard the PTI MPAs’ pleas and dismissed them for being “ineffective”.
During the hearing, the pending Punjab elections came under discussion in which CJP Bandial asked ECP Director General (Law) Muhammad Arshad about the commission receiving directives from the Lahore High Court regarding the Punjab elections.
“What is the election commission now doing after the [Lahore] High Court’s order,” Justice Bandial asked.
To this, the ECP official replied that the ECP held discussions about it with Punjab Governor Balighur Rehman yesterday but the “meeting minutes have not been received yet”.
