PTI chief says date for long march to be announced next week
\n\u2022 Moves IHC against disqualification in Toshakhana case<\/p>\n
ISLAMABAD:<\/strong>\u00a0A day after his\u00a0disqualification\u00a0by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for involvement in corrupt practices, former prime minister Imran Khan on Saturday did not seem too optimistic about the outcome of backchannel dialogue efforts with the quarters concerned, saying he will finally announce a date for his \u2018historic long march\u2019 on the capital by next week.<\/p>\n Also on Saturday, the Pak\u00adis\u00adtan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief moved the Islamabad High Court (IHC) against the ECP ruling in the Toshakhana case and reque\u00adsted a hearing on the petition the same day. However, the IHC chief justice dec\u00adlined the request and said the petition along with obje\u00adctions raised by the registrar will be taken up on Monday.<\/p>\n During a press conference alongside Senator Azam Swati, who was\u00a0released on bail\u00a0earlier this week, at Banigala, Imran Khan was asked for an update on his party\u2019s talks with the government and the powers that be.<\/p>\n \u201cI will announce the date on Thursday or Friday [Oct 27-28]. Even if I am arrested [before the protest], the long march will take place because people want to get rid of the current government,\u201d Mr Khan said.<\/p>\n Speaking about Mr Swati, who was arrested for posting a tweet about the army chief, the PTI chief said it was unfortunate that politicians were being treated like terrorists in Pakistan. \u201cEarlier Shah\u00adbaz Gill was arrested and was stri\u00adpped and subjected to sexual torture. If the court had taken notice of the incident, Azam Swati would not have suffered the same fate,\u201d he alleged.<\/p>\n In a comment on the arr\u00adest of the PTI lawmaker from outside the ECP, Imran Khan said Saleh Mohammad was treated by police like a criminal.<\/p>\n Senator Azam Swati said that despite being a parliamentary leader of PTI and a legislator for the last 17 years, he was arrested in front of his grandchildren and was subjected to torture. Mr Swati added that if the CJP could not protect the people, he had no right to stay in the office.<\/p>\n In a chamber hearing on Saturday, Chief Justice Athar Minallah upheld the objections raised by the court\u2019s registrar and fixed the PTI\u2019s petition for hearing on Monday. The registrar had raised objections that the plea could not be heard on Saturday, since it was not a habeas corpus matter. How\u00adever, a hearing on other adm\u00adinistrative objections has been deferred till Monday.<\/p>\n It may be mentioned that the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) is scheduled to meet on the same day to consider Justice Minallah and three other judges for their elevation to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n If JCP recommends Justice Minallah\u2019s name for ascension to the apex court, then he can only hear this case for two weeks because as per Article 175-A, the Parliamentary Committee on Judges Appointments is bound to make a decision on JCP\u2019s recommendations in two weeks.<\/p>\n The petition, filed by PTI counsel Barrister Syed Ali Zafar and Barrister Gohar Khan, contended that \u201cin case the asset is sold or otherwise disposed of, before June 30, there was no requirement of providing the same in the statement of assets and liabilities. It said the ECP had no jurisdiction to de-seat Imran Khan without following the procedure provided in the Elections Act 2017 and obtaining the judgement from a tribunal against a member after a proper trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PTI chief says date for long march to be announced next week \u2022 Moves IHC against disqualification in Toshakhana case ISLAMABAD:\u00a0A day after his\u00a0disqualification\u00a0by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for involvement in corrupt practices, former prime minister Imran Khan on Saturday did not seem too optimistic about the outcome of backchannel dialogue efforts with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islamabad","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106538,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106536\/revisions\/106538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/106537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Plea in IHC<\/h2>\n