Dissident PTI lawmakers should be banned for life, says Imran Khan to SC

Karachi [Pakistan], April 14 (ANI): A few days after being ousted as the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan moved the Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday demanding the disqualification of dissident Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) members of the National Assembly.
The petition requested that the dissident PTI members should be disqualified from parliamentary affairs for life and that if any member wants to leave the party they must resign as members of the NA first "instead of committing defection as provided in Article 63-A of the Constitution by changing his loyalty in favor of another political party actuated by hidden motive," Express Tribune reported.
On the day Shehbaz Sharif was elected as the PM, PTI had boycotted the session and announced en masse resignations from the lower house of the country's parliament.
The petition lists the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), speaker of the National Assembly, law secretary and cabinet secretary as parties, and has been filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution - which states that for the apex court to have jurisdiction on a matter, the matter needs to be of public importance and a violation of fundamental rights mentioned in the Constitution. It further stated that shifting loyalties meant that the individual was no longer Sadiq and Amin (truthful and honest), reported The Express Tribune.
"Being an elected representative [it] is constitutionally prohibited and morally reprehensible to refrain from the act of defection [against their parliamentary party], and the member cannot claim a vested right to have his vote counted... and such tented votes are to be excluded from the vote count," the petition read. It stated that there was no reason for the dissident party members to not be banned for life.
"This Honourable Court has observed in many cases that defection or floor crossing is nothing short of disease of cancer to the entire body of politics and it destroys the spirit of democratic governance," the petition said, adding that this justified a lifetime ban against such members under Article 62(1)(f) of the Constitution.
Earlier today, the PTI sent references against 20 of its dissident members to the ECP, seeking their disqualification for violating party discipline and defecting.
Sources in the National Assembly Secretariat confirmed that references were received from the PTI leadership against the members, which had to be submitted to the ECP within two days, reported The Express Tribune.
The voting on the no-confidence motion against the Imran Khan-led Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Insaf government was held in the National Assembly late at night on April 9, with 174 members recording their votes in favour of the motion that ousted the Imran Khan government.
Imran Khan has become the first Prime Minister of Pakistan to lose a no-trust vote in the National Assembly. Notably, no Prime Minister has completed a full five-year tenure in Pakistan so far. (ANI)