By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Friday challenged the Mohsin Reza Naqvi’s appointment as caretaker chief minister Punjab in the supreme court.
Asad Umar challenges appointment
The Imran-led party has repeatedly expressed reservations about Naqvi as having affiliated with the Pakistan Peoples Party and his alleged bias towards the party. Party’s Secretary General Asad Umar filed the petition in the apex court.
The plea urged the supreme court to stop Mohsin Naqvi from working as the caretaker chief minister. In the petition, the party also challenged the appointments of Raja Riaz as leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, and also members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
PTI has made the Leader of the Opposition Raja Riaz, federal government, National Assembly Speaker Raja Parvez Ashraf, the governments of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, ECP, and Punjab caretaker Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi respondents in the case.
“It is also stated that the caretaker CM ought to possess certain but necessary intellectual and relative experience as well as characteristics which is to ensure that the appointed caretaker chief minister, is better equipped with expertise required for the office of the CM. This is unfortunately not the case herein, said the petition.
Equal or better suited candidates were available and have not been considered consciously. An individual without any experience of political, constitutional, bureaucratic set-ups has been selected/appointed for this position for reasons which are not available nor discernible. The “decision” has not been made available, as none is present in writing, though a conclusion thereof has been communicated vide notification No F.2(5)/2023-Cord- dated 22.01.2023 (‘Impugned Notfication’) by the Respondent Commission. The same is patently unlawful and smacks of sheer arbitrariness.”
The petition states that Naqvi unfortunately has no political, administrative and legal experience in ensuring the rule of law, the working of governments, bureaucracy, the requirements of law and/ or the Constitution.
“How the issue of his suitability has been decided so as to result in an ‘unanimous’ Communication of the Respondent Commission appointing him as the care-taker chief minister, is not manifest and in negation to the mandate of the Constitution.”
Meanwhile, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, chief Awami Muslim League has also filed a separate plea challenging caretaker CM Naqvi’s appointment. Last week, amid controversies and disagreements among Punjab’s political stakeholders, Mohsin Raza Naqvi took oath as the caretaker chief minister at the Governor House in Lahore.
