The Lahore High Court here on Thursday adjourned to May 9 the proceedings in a petition of a PML-N former MPA Shumaila Rana seeking restoration of her assembly membership for final arguments. Ms Rana had resigned from her assembly membership in July 2009 owing to party pressure after a case of credit card theft and misuse was registered against her.
Later she was acquitted of the charges and filed the petition for the restoration of her membership and alleged that she had resigned under coercion. Besides PML-N leaders she also made party to speaker Punjab assembly Rana Iqbal in her petition. She contended that the credit card theft case against her was concocted and baseless and her own party pressurised her to resign. She said an acute role was played to create harassment and pressure over her that she was compelled to draft her resignation.
One of the PML-N leaders grabbed the resignation by force from her and gave it to the speaker of the Punjab Assembly on July 25, 2009. She said the speaker accepted her resignation which she had never given to him. She said the speaker committed illegality by accepting her resignation as he did not adopt legal procedure while accepting her resignation. She said according to Rule 35 of Procedure of Provincial Assembly Punjab 1997, the speaker should have conducted an inquiry before accepting her resignation which he did not conduct.