National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf has approved the resignations of further 43 Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s lawmakers in the lower house, sources told Geo News on Tuesday.
Officials at the speaker’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Ashraf had approved the resignations on January 22 and sent a summary to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for the lawmakers’ denotification.
The approval means that only dissident PTI lawmakers remain in the National Assembly now.
Interestingly, the development comes a day after the party announced that it is withdrawing the resignations of 45 PTI MNAs and also approached the ECP in this regard.
According to sources, the resignations of Muhammad Nawaz Allai and Sardar Talib Hassan Nakai were not accepted as they had submitted leave applications.
‘Shehbaz Sharif has lost support of 172 members’
Reacting to the development, senior PTI leader Fawad Chauhdry said the main reason to return to the assembly in small numbers was to remove Raja Riaz as the opposition leader because the legislature had “no importance”.
“Right now, Shehbaz Sharif has lost the support of 172 members and is relying on lotas (turncoats) to save his government,” tweeted Fawad.
