ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: The People’s Party Parliamentarians says it has prepared a case to seek legal punishment for 21 National Assembly members who have defected from the party to back Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali.

The timing for the move would be decided by PPP chief Benazir Bhutto, party sources said on Tuesday.

The party says it will pose a legal challenge to the existence of the PPP-Patriots.

“It has no legal standing and we will contest it,” a PPP spokesman said about the Election Commission’s registration of PPP-Patriots, which includes three key ministers.

An EC official on Sunday confirmed a statement by Petroleum and Natural Resources Minister Noraiz Shakoor that the PPP-Patriots had been registered as a political party.

The move seemed to be the final break with the parent party by the defectors who had until now been pledging loyalty to Ms Bhutto’s leadership and blaming others acting on her behalf for the split.

PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar told Dawn that his party would seek the unseating of the defectors from the National Assembly and the cabinet for their violation of the anti-defection law.

Mr Babar said the PPP had no official notification from the Election Commission about the registration of the PPP-Patriots.

But he said: “Whether we are notified or not, we will seek to unseat them from the assembly and remove them from the cabinet positions they are holding.”

“We have prepared the case, but the timing will be a political decision,” he said.