Imran Khan to contest from 33 seats in Pakistan National Assembly byelection
Twelve of the 33 open seats in the lower house are located in the provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad, nine in Sindh, and one in Balochistan.
Imran Khan, the head of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and a former prime minister, has decided to run for all 33 open seats in the National Assembly, according to senior party official Shah Mahmood Qureshi. The decision was made during the party’s core committee meeting, according to PTI vice-chairman and former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who spoke at a press conference in Lahore on Sunday evening.
“For all 33 parliamentary seats, Imran Khan will be the only candidate for the PTI. The choice was made during the party’s core committee meeting on Sunday in Zaman Park in Lahore, which Khan presided over “quoting Qureshi.
Khan will be the PTI candidate on each of the three seats, PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry stated earlier this month on Twitter. After the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) stated on Friday that by-elections for 33 open National Assembly seats would be held on March 16, the final decision was made.
Twelve of the 33 open seats in the lower house are located in the provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad, nine in Sindh, and one in Balochistan.
After Imran Khan was removed from office in April 2022, the PTI legislators left the Pakistan National Assembly in large numbers.
However, the speaker of the National Assembly only accepted 11 resignations, explaining that he needed to personally confirm that the MPs were leaving on their own own. Khan ran for eight parliamentary seats in October of last year and won six of them.
The ECP de-notified 35 PTI legislators last month after National Assembly Speaker Ashraf accepted their resignations. After Imran Khan announced his intention to return to the National Assembly and call for a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the speaker later accepted further 35 resignations from PTI legislators (and the ECP de-notified them) as well as the remaining 43.
43 PTI legislators remain under notification by the ECP. Khan’s party would be all but eliminated if the ECP de-notifies the remaining 43 PTI lawmakers.
