ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court said that under the Constitution it is the fundamental right of the political parties that its members remain loyal to it.

A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, on Tuesday, heard the petitions of 25 dissident MPAs of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) against the verdict of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to disqualify them for polling vote to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Hamza Shehbaz Sharif for the chief minister of Punjab.

At the onset of the hearing, the counsel representing the MPAs argued that no instruction was issued by their parliamentary party leader to vote for the joint candidate of PTI and PML-Q, Pervaiz Elahi, adding Elahi, who is also speaker Punjab Assembly, had boycotted the CM election.

Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar questioned how the petitioners, who were PTI MPAs, had voted for the PML-N candidate.

Justice Bandial asked why they participated in the CM election when their party had boycotted the election session.

The CJP stated that the Supreme Court had already declared defection a “cancer” in its interpretation of Article 63A of the Constitution, adding that defection was not a small issue.

PTI dissident MPA Uzma Kardar, who was elected on a PTI reserved seat for women, informed the bench that the party had ousted her from the party, saying my case is not of defection.

Upon that, the chief justice observed that the reserved seats in an assembly were allocated to political parties according to their proportional representation in the house.

“It would have to be seen that when the PTI had ousted you from the party, why you remained a (assembly) member,” he added.

Uzma replied; “I was a diehard worker of the PTI, and had worked hard for the party, putting in blood and sweat.” She claimed that she had been ousted due to “internal conspiracies” within the PTI. “Yet I remained a parliamentarian.”

“Article 63-A has given me protection (in the sense) that defection has not been proved against me,” she said.

Justice Mazhar asked whether the ECP did not know that she had been ousted from the party. Uzma said that all documents were present before the ECP.

Justice Bandial said the apex court had already made it clear that the votes of dissident lawmakers would not be counted. “It is the fundamental right of political parties that its members remain loyal to it,” he added.

The chief justice then referred to the no-confidence vote faced by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He asked Uzma: “Do you know where Boris Johnson was defeated? No motion was submitted against him in parliament. No-confidence motion against Boris Johnson was presented within his party,” he said, while addressing Kardar.

However, Uzma said that nobody in the PTI had the courage to speak against the party chief. Without naming anyone from the party, she added: “For one year they kept on saying to support to Buzdar and things did not work out, but the party leadership paid no heed to their concern.”

The bench directed the petitioners to prepare on the point of voting for Hamza Shehbaz and adjourned the hearing for an indefinite period.

The ECP had disqualified 25 dissident members of the Punjab Assembly of the PTI on May 20 on the grounds that they had voted for PML-N’s Hamza Shehbaz in the election for Punjab chief minister against the party line and defected.

The ECP’s judgment came after the Supreme Court’s opinion on the presidential reference on the interpretation of Article 63A, related to the disqualification of lawmakers over defection.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022