LAHORE – PML-N leader Hamza Shahbaz Sharif has filed a petition in the Lahore High Court (LHC) over delay in election of new chief minister of Punjab.
PML-Q’s Pervaiz Elahi and PML-N’s Hamza Shahbaz Sharif are in the race to become next chief minister after PTI’s Usman Buzdar resigned from the post on the directives of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Voting for the CM election was originally scheduled for April 3 but it was moved to April 6 due to ruckus in the provincial assembly and the Punjab Assembly deputy speaker Dost Muhammad Mazari on Tuesday delayed it until April 16.
However, another controversy surfaced when Mazari called a session of the assembly to elect new leader of the House on April 6 but it was contradicted by the assembly secretariat. Later, the provincial lawmakers were barred from entering the Punjab Assembly after it was barricaded with barbed wires.
In his petition, Hamza Shahbaz has made chief secretary Punjab, the PA speaker and deputy speaker, and the provincial police chief as respondents.
He argued that delaying the assembly session for voting was “based on mala fide, with [the] intent to defeat the mandatory constitutional requirements, making political gains by using public office(s) and authority is evidently inchoate; arbitrary; unreasonable; irrational and without jurisdiction”.
He pointed out that the provincial assembly was sealed on April 6 and lawmakers were not allowed to enter the building for the session.
“In order to exhibit the clear will of the people’s representatives, the political parties who nominated and support the petitioner for the slot of chief minister, held a session in a hotel next to the building of the [PA] and passed a resolution in favour of the petitioner by a majority of 200 votes,” the PML-N leader said in the petition while referring to the symbolic assembly session.
Requesting court to declared all these action illegal, he urged the court to issued directives for holding the assembly session to elect new chief minister of the Punjab.
The court is likely to take up the petition today.
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