PTI wiped out from national assembly as Raja Pervez Ashraf appoved another 43 resignations

National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf has approved the resignations of 43 more Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s lawmakers in the lower house.

Officials on the condition of anonymity, said that the speaker had approved the resignations on January 22 and sent a summary to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for the lawmakers’ denotification.

The approval means that only dissident PTI lawmakers remain in the National Assembly now.

PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry said the main reason for returning to the assembly was to remove Ahmed from the post since the parliament had “no importance”.

He tweeted: “Right now, Shehbaz Sharif has lost the support of 172 members and is relying on lotas (turncoats) to save his government.”

So far, the resignations of 123 PTI MNAs have been accepted and 81 members have been denotified.

The PTI resignations were accepted by NA Speaker Ashraf in four stages. Initially, only 11 resignations were accepted, while 34 resignations were accepted on January 17, another 35 on January 20 and on January 24 (today) 43 have been approved.

A day earlier Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) withdrew the resignations of its remaining 44 members of the National Assembly whose resignations had yet to be accepted.However the speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf on Tuesday approved the letters of an additional 43 MPs.

Officials from the speaker’s office requesting anonymity said Ashraf had approved the resignations in recent days and had already sent a summary recommending their de-notification to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

The approval of the resignations comes a day after at least 45 PTI MPs attempted to meet the speaker in order to withdraw their resignations.