Fawad says NA independence forgone, running ‘biased’ session

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Wednesday expressed concerns over the reports of the National Assembly (NA) being run on “phone calls” from certain quarters, saying that the lower house had forgone its independence and was running a “biased” session. Talking to the media alongside fellow party leaders Shireen Mazari and Asad Umar, the former information minister said that the members of parliament, including Fehmida Mirza, Khalid Magsi and Aslam Bhootani, had referred to this. Bhootani, an independent lawmaker, pointed out that he spoke to certain quarters “from where we normally receive telephone calls” to speak to Ahsan Iqbal for including development schemes in his constituency in the Public Sector Development Programmme (PSDP). Terming the reports of interference in assembly matters as an “anomaly”, the information minister stressed that the country needs to be politically stable before it can be economically stable. READ Five MDA officials sacked over alleged corruption He claimed that nothing was being done in accordance with the Constitution anymore. He asked why the superior judiciary was not hearing Faisal Vawda’s reference and why had it not formed a commission to probe the alleged threat letter despite President Dr Arif Alvi’s letters in this regard. Wondering what the outcome of isolating PTI would be, he stressed that the only way out of the political crisis was to go for new elections. Umar told the media that the PTI requested the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to issue a notification for five reserved seats in Punjab Assembly immediately as the Lahore High Court’s (LHC) order was out in this regard. He alleged that the incumbent provincial government was planning on rigging the Punjab by-polls by giving misleading information to voters when they text on 8300 to find out about their constituency. He demanded that the ECP probe this matter, alleging that all state institutions were trying to protect the incumbent government. Shireen asked for Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja’s resignation and demanded that the Supreme Court (SC) act against the electoral body since it could not conduct transparent elections. (With input from news desk)

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