The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday issued notices to Punjab Chief Minister Hamza Shehbaz, the Attorney General for Pakistan and others on the second petition filed by the PTI requesting the court to declare the PML-N leader’s election as CM “illegal” and to restrain him from working in that capacity.<\/p>\n
Hamza was elected as the Punjab CM on April 16, during a provincial assembly session that was marred by mayhem. He received a total of 197 votes \u2014 11 more than the required 186 \u2014 including from 25 dissident PTI MPAs that were crucial for his victory.<\/p>\n
Since then, a series of petitions have challenged Hamza’s election as the chief minister, with two from the PTI, and one from the PML-Q.<\/p>\n
The PTI first approached the LHC last month on May 19. That petition was filed by five Punjab Assembly members of the party \u2014 Mohammad Sibtain Khan, Zainab Umair, Mian Mohammad Aslam Iqbal, Syed Abbas Ali Shah and Ahsan Saleem Baryar \u2014 and is being heard by LHC Chief Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti.<\/p>\n
The following day, Punjab Assembly Speaker Parvez Elahi submitted his petition, which his lawyer, Safdar Shaheen Pirzada, had said in a comment to Dawn.com was identical to PTI’s. During the hearing on May 20, Justice Bhatti clubbed the two petitions together.<\/p>\n
On June 1, the PTI, once again, moved the court against Hamza after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) de-seated 25 MPAs for defecting in the election of the chief minister and the opinion of the Supreme Court, stating that the votes of defectors should not be counted.<\/p>\n
The plea was filed by PTI’s Punjab Assembly lawmakers Zainab Umair, Shamsa Ali and Umum Banin Ali, and was accepted for hearing yesterday, in the court of Justice Shujaat Ali Khan.<\/p>\n
At the outset of the hearing today, Assistant Advocate General Tayyab Jan raised an objection to the petition and demanded that it should be dismissed instantly.<\/p>\n
He contended that matters of Parliament were not supposed to be brought to court. “The petitioners in the case are members of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. They have the right to consult the Assembly.”<\/p>\n
“They can even bring a no-confidence motion against Hamza,” Jan added.<\/p>\n
Here, Advocate Azhar Siddique, the petitioners’ counsel, argued that after the Supreme Court’s analysis of Article 63-A of the Constitution, which deals with defection by parliamentarians, the position of dissident PTI MPAs had become clear.<\/p>\n
“Hence, after subtracting the votes of the defecting lawmakers, Hamza no longer holds the majority to remain as the chief minister of the province,” Siddique said.<\/p>\n
The court, subsequently, issued notices to Hamza, the AGP, Advocate General of Punjab and the provincial secretary and summoned written responses from them by June 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday issued notices to Punjab Chief Minister Hamza Shehbaz, the Attorney General for Pakistan and others on the second petition filed by the PTI requesting the court to declare the PML-N leader’s election as CM “illegal” and to restrain him from working in that capacity. Hamza was elected as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[8232,452,1635,1669,158,3464],"class_list":{"0":"post-264878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-national","8":"tag-agp","9":"tag-election","10":"tag-hamza-shehbaz","11":"tag-lhc","12":"tag-pti","13":"tag-punjab-cm"},"yoast_head":"\n