The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday suspended the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) order that denotified 70 of the former ruling party’s lawmakers who had resigned in large numbers in April of last year, providing another immediate relief to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
The National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf, the ECP, and other parties were given notices following today’s hearing of the PTI’s appeal by a single-member LHC bench led by Justice Shahid Karim, requesting that they respond by March 7.
After the high court suspended a similar order of the ECP regarding 43 PTI MNAs, the lawmakers went to the high court to challenge the commission’s acceptance of their resignation and ensuing denotification.
Shiekh Rashid, an ally of Imran Khan, was among the 35 MNAs whose resignation Speaker Ashraf was accepted on January 20. The commission then denotified the resignations, and by-elections were announced.
Read: LHC suspends ECP’s de-notification order of 43 PTI MNAs
Riaz Fatyana and 42 additional MNAs who had their resignations “accepted by the NA Speaker Ashraf on January 22” had earlier this month submitted a petition contesting the actions of the NA speaker and the ECP.
On February 8, the LHC judge issued an order prohibiting the ECP from announcing the dates of the seats’ elections and suspending its notification of those dates.
According to the court order, “the by-election process for these seats shall remain suspended.”. By March 7, the court had accepted the petition for a regular hearing asking for responses from the NA speaker, the ECP, and the federal government.
 suspended the ECP order that denotified 70 MNAs of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).){kind=link}