ISLAMABAD: Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday reserved its verdict in the defection reference against 25 MPAs from Punjab Assembly, moved by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) against them, for voting against the party’s policy in the election of chief minister Punjab last month.
Initially, ECP was scheduled to announce the reserved decision today (Wednesday) which was part of the related cause list.
Later; however, the cause list was revised and it did not have the announcement of the reserved decision as its agenda item—till the filing of this report Tuesday night. It has been learnt that the ECP bench decided to revise the cause list after the issuance of Supreme Court’s verdict regarding Article 63-A.
It is unconfirmed whether or not the electoral body would announce the reserved verdict today (Wednesday.)
Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja heads the three-member bench comprising of Nisar Ahmed Durrani and Shah Muhammad Jatoi that heard the defection reference against PTI’s 25 dissident members provincial assembly (MPAs).
PTI Senator Barrister Ali Zafar and Advocate Faisal Chaudhry represented the former ruling party whereas dissidents’ counsels included Barrister Salman Akram Raja and Advocate Khalid Ishaq.
During the proceedings of the case, the defence counsels argued that the MPAs were not aware of the directions of the parliamentary party on who to vote for in the CM Punjab election.
In response, Zafar, the PTI’s counsel, said, the defence side was resorting to “sleepwalking defence.”
Explaining this terminology, he said, “Once a man announced before a whole gathering of villagers that he was going to murder someone, which he did, the next day, in broad daylight in front of several witnesses. The killer’s lawyer took the defence in court that his client had committed the murder while sleepwalking. The defence failed and the murderer was rightly hanged.”
Zafar continued, “Such an absurd plea is called sleepwalking defence .This is exactly what the defectors are doing; by taking the defence that they were not aware of parliamentary party’s directions regarding who to vote for in the election of CM Punjab—when the whole world knew about it, and the same was being discussed in talk shows and reported in the newspapers. It is like these MPAs were sleepwalking all that time.”
Article 63-A of the Constitution deals with the defection of lawmakers who vote against their party’s direction in the election of prime minister/ CM, vote of confidence/ vote of no-confidence, and money bill.
The ECP, under Article 63-A, is bound to decide the defection case(s) within 30 days of the receipt of related case(s).
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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