MM News

While taking another U-Turn, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has decided against contesting by-elections.

Earlier PTI had announced that the party chairman would be candidate on all 33 seats of National Assembly on which the by-polls will take place on March 16.

But suddenly, Imran Khan on Friday took a U-turn and announced that he would not contest election on any of these seat and instead the party would field others candidates on the seats.

As per political and law experts, the reason behind this new U-turn is Imran Khan widely anticipated disqualification in the Tyrian White case.

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has fixed February 9 for hearing a petition seeking disqualification of Khan for concealing his alleged daughter, White, in his nomination papers submitted to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in 2018.

Earlier, Khan had decided to set another record by contesting the by-polls on 33 NA seats scheduled to be held on March 16. The seats fell vacant after the ECP de-notified the lawmakers following NA Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf’s acceptance of the lawmakers’ resignations.

A day earlier, the PTI chairman withdrew his nomination papers for the by-poll in the NA-193 constituency.

According to sources privy to the matter, Khan has directed the party’s ex-lawmakers to file their nomination papers for the by-polls. He asked the former MNAs to launch election campaigns in their respective constituencies.

It is pertinent to mention here that the PTI resigned en masse in April last year after the ouster of Khan as the prime minister, but only 11 resignations were accepted in July.

Later, as the party tried to stage a comeback to the house, the speaker began accepting their resignations — and in a couple of days, he accepted 113 more, including the 33.

The development comes after the party had announced that Khan would be contesting for the 33 seats and the party leaders, who were elected as MNAs from those constituencies, would be fielded as covering candidates.