LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) Thursday ordered to present a copy of its earlier judgement ordering the National Assembly speaker to reinstate Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) lawmakers during the next hearing of the case concerning the appointment of the chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
Earlier this month, the high court suspended the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to de-notify 43 PTI MPs, and also postponed the by-elections in the constituencies represented by the de-notified members, originally scheduled to take place in two phases on March 16 and 19, until further notice.
The ruling came on a plea moved by the lawmakers challenging the approval by Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, the speaker, of their resignations. The ECP had acted after the speaker sent the resignation letters to it.
The petition in question says that opposition leader Raja Riaz Ahmad should not have been consulted on the appointment of the NAB chairman. The petition references Ahmad, who is among the disgruntled members of PTI that parted ways with former prime minister Imran Khan during the vote of no-confidence last year.
The petitioner argued that Ahmad’s appointment as the opposition leader was already contested and that the case was being heard in court, whereas the members of the PTI legislators had been reinstated.
Therefore, until the appointment of the new opposition leader, the court should prohibit the president and prime minister from appointing the new NAB chairman.
Aftab Sultan had resigned as NAB chairman, having been appointed as the head of the anti-graft body on July 21, 2022, for three years by the PDM government after Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal’s tenure ended last year.
Speaking to Geo News, Sultan said he had been asked to do certain things that were not acceptable to him. It is believed that Sultan suffered this setback after refusing to make arrests of Khan on the government’s instruction.
Apparently, he had also withdrawn regional NAB director-generals’ powers to arrest citizens to avoid potential misuse of authority.
