Zubair Qureshi Islamabad
The Islamabad High Court on Thursday took up a petition filed by the Pakistan Muslim League-N Murtaza Javed Abbasi who has challenged Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri’s move to delay the convening of the National Assembly session to April 22.
In the last hearing, the Deputy Speaker had fixed April 16 as the date for convening the National Assembly’s session in which a no-confidence motion against Speaker Asad Qaiser was to be dis cussed and voted on.
However, the Deputy Speaker a day earlier all of a sudden changed his mind and rescheduled the Assembly’s session for April 22 instead of the previous date.
“The National Assembly session, which was scheduled to be held at 4pm on April 16, will now be held at 3pm on April 22. The change in the schedule has been made by the acting speaker under Rule 49(2) of the Rules and Procedure for the Conduct of the Business in the National Assembly 2007,” said an official handout issued by the NA Secretariat on Wednesday.
The move has been challenged in the Islamabad High Court by Murtaza Javed Abbasi and Chief Justice of the IHC Athar Minallah has constituted a three-member full bench headed by himself to hear the case. The other two judges are Justice Amer Farooq and Justice Babar Sattar. The three-member bench will take up the case for hearing today (Friday).
The plea deemed the NA Deputy Speaker’s actions unconstitutional, and included the April 13 circular notifying of the adjournment.
The PML-N’s petition has called upon the court to direct the deputy speaker to immediately convene a session for the election of the speaker of the assembly, while his own powers would remain suspended as a separate no-confidence motion has been submitted against him.
The secretary of parliamentary affairs and secretary of the assembly have been directed to convene a meeting on April 16.
A day earlier, the assembly had issued a schedule for the election of a speaker, sending letters to all members of the house in this regard.
