The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Friday suspended a notification for by-elections on 24 National Assembly seats from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which was previously scheduled to be held on March 16 and 19, respectively.<\/p>\n
Twenty-four former MNAs from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had on Feb 23 filed a plea in the PHC against the acceptance of their resignations by the National Assembly speaker and their subsequent de-notification by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).<\/p>\n
These petitioners include former NA speaker Asad Qaiser, five ex-federal ministers Pervez Khattak, Murad Saeed, Omar Ayub Khan, Ali Amin Khan and Sheharyar Afridi and ex-MNA Imran Khattak.<\/p>\n
As many as 123 PTI MNAs had resigned en masse from the lower house of Parliament following the ouster of PTI chief Imran Khan in April last year in a vote of no confidence.<\/p>\n
The former lawmakers filed two identical petitions with the court requesting it to set aside four notifications issued by the NA speaker and the ECP on the matter.<\/p>\n
They had also sought interim relief seeking suspension of those notifications and orders for the ECP not to hold by-polls in their constituencies until the disposal of their petitions. The petitioners had also requested the court to declare the speaker\u2019s act of accepting their resignations a violation of the law in line with Supreme Court judgements.<\/p>\n
The ECP has already announced the schedule for the by-polls to fill vacant seats and polling in the 24 constituencies will be held on March 16 and 19, respectively.<\/p>\n
On March 16, the polling will be held on six seats, which are: NA-4 Swat, NA-17 Haripur, NA-18 Swabi, NA-25 Nowshera, NA-26 Nowshera, NA-32 Kohat, NA-38 DI Khan and NA-43 Khyber.<\/p>\n
On March 19, the constituencies where polling will be held include NA-2 Swat, NA-3 Swat, NA-5 Upper Dir, NA-6 Lower Dir, NA-7 Lower Dir, NA-8 Malakand, NA- 9 Buner, NA-16 Abbottabad, NA-19 Swabi, NA-20 Mardan, NA-29 Peshawar, NA-30 Peshawar, NA-34 Karak, NA-40 Bajaur, NA-42 Mohmand and NA-44 Khyber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Friday suspended a notification for by-elections on 24 National Assembly seats from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which was previously scheduled to be held on March 16 and 19, respectively. Twenty-four former MNAs from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had on Feb 23 filed a plea in the PHC against the acceptance of their resignations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-317187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-peshawar"},"yoast_head":"\n