ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court will take up Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s petition and the Presidential Reference regarding imposing lifetime ban from contesting elections on defection from a political party.
A five-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial and comprising Justice Ijaz ul Ahsan, Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel, Justice Munib Akhtar, and Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail will hear the PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s petition, filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution and the Reference on May 9.
The PTI government after the no-confidence motion submitted against the ex-PM Khan, filed the Presidential Reference on March 21 under Article 186 of the Constitution to interpret Article 63-A in a manner to disqualify a member, who defects his political party, for life.
The reference has sought the SC’s opinion on interpretation of Article 63-A to achieve the constitutional objective of curbing the menace of defections and purification of the electoral process and democratic accountability. The reference wonders if a member, engaged in constitutionally prohibited and morally reprehensible act of defection, can nevertheless claim a vested right to have his vote counted and given equal weight or there exists or is to be read into the Constitution a restriction to exclude such tainted votes from the vote count.
However, the PTI chairman after his removal filed the petition contending that the defection or floor crossing in the matter related to no-confidence against the prime minister or chief minister amounts to breach of trust imposed upon the member by a political party, and in that case defecting member cannot at all claim himself to be Sadiq or Amin under Article 63 of the Constitution.
He also contented that besides legal implications, the floor crossing carries along with itself moral implication, which erodes the trust the public depose upon the legislative organ of the state and lowers the dignity of the entire parliament.
In the last hearing, the counsel for president Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz had argued that through the reference the apex court was being asked to invoke Article 63-A only to bypass the requirement of Article 239 of the Constitution that deals with the constitutional amendment. Thus, if the SC reads lifetime disqualification for defection, as well as, not to count vote of the defecting member, then the court’s opinion would mean substituting the constitutional amendment, he had argued.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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