LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) said it was mandatory for a chief minister to possess round-the-clock support from a majority of legislators in the legislative assembly.
Justice Asim Hafeez made these comments as a five-judge bench heard a plea from Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, challenging Governor Baligh ur-Rehman’s orders to remove him from office.
The hearing coincides with an ongoing session of the Punjab Assembly, which has been disrupted by two consecutive days of protests from opposition members, who are demanding that Elahi take a vote of confidence.
Last month, the governor had removed Elahi from his position as chief minister in an effort to prevent former prime minister Imran Khan from dissolving the Punjab Assembly. Elahi had argued that the move was unconstitutional and unlawful, and subsequently approached the court.
At a previous hearing, the LHC had reinstated Elahi as chief minister after he pledged to the court not to dissolve the provincial assembly until the next hearing.
During the hearing, Justice Shaikh commented that the matter was yet to be resolved and that it would only be settled when a vote of confidence was taken.
The court then asked Elahi’s lawyer if they were accepting the offer for a vote of confidence, to which the lawyer replied that they had rejected the offer. Justice Shaikh stated that if a consensus couldn’t be reached between the governor and the chief minister, the case would be decided on “merit.”
The confidence motion card was played to prevent Khan, who is backing Elahi in the provincial parliament, from going ahead with the scheduled dissolution of the assembly.
Khan announced last month he would dissolve two provincial assemblies, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, earlier than scheduled, in an attempt to build pressure on the federal government to hold snap elections.
Once that was done, he had said his party would also resign from the National Assembly that is run by a unity government consisting of his opposition parties.
That scenario would have vacated over 60 percent of the parliamentary seats to make Khan’s snap polls case stronger.
Khan has been demanding snap polls since he was ousted in April last year after he lost a parliament’s vote of confidence, and led countrywide rallies to mount pressure on the government.
Sharif’s unity government has rejected the demand, reiterating repeatedly that the elections will be held on schedule in October 2023.
