ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday granted one day to the deputy attorney general (DAG) for arguments in civil miscellaneous application (CMA) moved for formation of a larger bench in main plea challenging disqualification reference against PTI Chairman Imran Khan.
Chief Justice Anwar Kasi picked up the case for hearing of the CMA moved by Kaptaan seeking formation of larger bench in a case challenging disqualification reference pending against him at the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
During proceedings, DAG Fasiur Rehman Niazi suggested not to constitute a larger bench and sought one day for legal arguments which was granted. Babar Awan, counsel for the petitioner, said that whenever a constitutional matter would be placed before the court a larger bench would be formed. In the main petition, the skipper took the plea that the reference filed against him now became time barred as 90 days passed with regard to reference being pending before the ECP.
Kaptaan was of the view that the ECP was bound to decide this reference within 90 days and now it had exceeded the time limit, thus ECP had lost its jurisdiction.
He argued that the National Assembly speaker under Article 63 (2) could forward a disqualification reference to the ECP within 30 days while under Article 63 (3), “the ECP shall decide the question within 90 days from its receipt”.
The main petition was pending before Justice Aamir Farooq and he had sought comments from the Attorney General office on the last hearing.
This reference was filed before the speaker by the PML-N lawmakers seeking disqualification of Imran Khan.
