Pakistan’s ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan will contest all 33 parliamentary seats in a March by-election, his party has announced.
Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, January 29 evening, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) vice-chairman and former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the decision was taken during the party’s core committee meeting.
“Imran Khan will be PTI’s sole candidate for all 33 parliamentary seats. The decision was taken at the party’s core committee meeting chaired by Khan at Zaman Park Lahore on Sunday,” Qureshi said.
On Friday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced that by-elections for 33 seats in the National Assembly would be held on March 16.
Khan’s party left the National Assembly, the lower house of Pakistan’s parliament, en masse after being ousted from power in a parliamentary vote of no confidence last April.
However, Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf did not accept the resignations and said he needed to personally verify whether the lawmakers were resigning of their own free will.
Last month, the Speaker accepted the resignations of 35 PTI MPs, after which the ECP denotified them.
Subsequently, the Speaker accepted another 35 (and the ECP de-notified them as well), and following the resignations of the remaining 43 PTI MPs, Khan asked Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to return to the National Assembly to put him to the test of a vote of confidence. declare.
ECP has not yet de-notified 43 PTI MPs. If the ECP denotifies the remaining 43 PTI MPs, Khan’s party will be virtually wiped out from the National Assembly.
In October last year, Khan contested eight parliamentary seats after the speaker accepted 11 resignations of PTI MPs. Khan won six of them.
The federal alliance of nine parties (Pakistan Democratic Movement) has said that it cannot take part in the by-elections. If PDM sticks to its decision then PTI can capture all the seats without any problem.
Of the 33 seats in the lower house, 12 will be in Punjab province, eight in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, three in Islamabad, nine in Sindh and one in Balochistan.
Earlier this month, Khan’s PTI also dissolved provincial assemblies in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, where his party was in power, to prompt the Shehbaz Sharif government to call immediate elections.
PTI has already approached the court against the acting Chief Minister Governor for not giving the date of elections in Punjab. After the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, the caretaker system has to hold elections within 90 days under the constitution.
Qureshi has said that he will move the High Court in KP against the governor and the caretaker chief minister for not giving a date for elections in the province.