Islamabad: Back-to-back surprises to the opposition as Speaker of the National Assembly Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has accepted the resignations of 35 more Members of the National Assembly belonging to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
The development came just three days after the speaker had accepted 34 MNAs of the former ruling party sensing their return to the lower house of the parliament.
A notification issued by the national assembly secretariat stated that copies have been forwarded to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for further necessary action.
قومی اسمبلی اسپیکر راجہ پرویز اشرف نے قواعد و ضوابط کے مطابق پی ٹی آئی کے مزید 35 ارکان اسمبلی کے استعفے منظور کر لئے_ pic.twitter.com/QokSWmn9hk
— National Assembly 🇵🇰 (@NAofPakistan) January 20, 2023
Soon after the ouster of Imran Khan from the Prime Minister’s office in April this year, 123 MNAs of the PTI submitted their resignations en masse, out of which only 11 had been accepted by Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf last year.
In December last year, when a delegation of PTI met the speaker, he insisted that he would accept the resignation letters of the remaining PTI MNAs individually in line with the rules of the National Assembly (NA) and the Constitution of Pakistan.
Recently, Imran Khan had said that the PTI could “test” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif with a vote of confidence the way they — the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) — had tested Imran Khan last year.
Following this, the speaker accepted the resignations of 35 MNAs, who were later denotified by the ECP. 34 of the denotified MNAs belong to the PTI, while the other one is Sheikh Rashid Ahmed — founder and leader of the Awami Muslim League (AML) and an ally of Imran Khan.
