Resignations once accepted can not be withdrawn, says Dastgir

F.P. Report

GURJRANWALA: Federal Minister for Energy Khurram Dastgir Khan said Saturday that once the resignations are accepted by the National Assembly, there is no clause in the constitution to withdraw them.

Addressing a press conference in Gujranwala, the minister said that it is the privilege of the National Assembly speaker to either accept or reject the resignations of house members. The energy minister said that they always performed their democratic role. He denounced vandalism displayed by the PTI supporters following the arrest of their leader Imran Khan on May 9. He said that the PTI rioters vandalized and torched civil and military installations.

He said ‘everybody has seen the difference between those who have made Pakistan and those who have torched Pakistan’. He was of the view that political instability was harming country’s economy. He lamented that the PTI mobs set to fire motorcycles of common citizens. He rued that Imran was not ready to accept the responsibility of May 9-10 violent incidents.

The minister said that in the past only terrorists would burn schools, but this time the political miscreants torched a school in Dir. The Lahore High Court on Friday set aside decisions of the Election Commission of Pakistan and the speaker of National Assembly to accept the resignation of 72 PTI lawmakers from Punjab. The judgement was announced by Justice Shahid Karim on the petitions filed by PTI leaders Shafqat Mahmood and Riaz Ahmad Fatyana.

The court ordered the PTI MNAs to personally appear before the speaker to withdraw their resignations and also directed the speaker to decide the matter after personally hearing each member. The PTI lawmakers resigned en masse from the National assembly following the ouster of Imran Khan from power as a result of a no-confidence motion in April 2022.