LAHORE: A division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday suspended a decision of a single bench against the acceptance of the resignations of 72 PTI MNAs by the National Assembly (NA) speaker and issued notices to the respondents for June 21.
The bench passed this order on an Intra-Court Appeal (ICA) of the NA secretary and asked the Attorney General of Pakistan to assist the court on the next hearing as some important points had been raised in the ICA, which need to be decided.
The bench also directed the appellant’s counsel to submit copies of the pending petitions before the Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court on similar matters.
The appellant’s counsel pleaded that the impugned judgment passed by the single bench on May 19 was illegal, without jurisdiction, arbitrary and liable to be set aside.
He argued that the single judge decided the questions of factual controversy without deciding the preliminary objections regarding the maintainability of the petitions by the lawmakers.
He said the single judge erred in issuing the judgment based on misreading and non-reading the facts and the law on the subject matter.
The ICA mentioned that the appellant was not given a fair opportunity of hearing by the judge, and even due process was not followed in passing the impugned judgment.
The appeal stated that resignations once forwarded to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) by the NA speaker after satisfying the same were genuine and voluntary; no court could go behind the satisfaction of the speaker unless the ECP for some valid reasons refused to de-notify those lawmakers.
The appeal said the findings of the single judge that the resignations of the respondent lawmakers could be withdrawn were without any legal basis and unconstitutional.
The appellant, therefore, asked the court to set aside the judgment of the single bench and maintain a status quo till a final decision on the appeal.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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