ISLAMABAD: National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has said he will not accept PTI members’ resignations without personal hearing and individual verification, asking PTI chairman Imran Khan to come to the house for due legal process, instead of giving dates, if he is serious in quitting the assembly.

Talking to Nadir Guramani of DawnNewsTV on Saturday, the speaker said in categorical terms that if all the PTI members decided to come to the house collectively, even then he would call each and every member to his chamber for personal verification in order to maintain “privacy”.

“Each and every member will have to come to my chamber and I will talk to them for verification,” said the speaker, adding that there could be no jalsa (public meeting) in the assembly on the resignation issue and he would not accept mass resignations.

In June, the speaker had sent notices to all 131 PTI members and AML chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed to individually appear before him in his chamber to confirm that their resignations were voluntary and not under duress, but none of them turned up.

Sources in NA secretariat said a majority of the resignations submitted by the PTI MNAs had a similar text printed on the PTI’s letterhead, adding that the secretariat staff also had doubts over the signatures of some members as they did not match with those on the assembly’s roll.

Earlier, then deputy speaker Qasim Suri had immediately accepted the mass resignations in absence of speaker and directed the NA secretariat to issue a notification. But soon after his election as the speaker, Mr Ashraf through a ruling prevented the secretariat from processing the resignations without due process.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2022