ISLAMABAD - The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Sunday called off by-elections on 37 National Assembly (NA) seats following orders by the four high courts, and suspended its election programmes’ notifications issued for the by-polls on the respective seats. The ECP issued four separate notifications to state that the fate of the by-polls would be decided by respective high courts. The commission called off bypolls on three national assembly seats from Islamabad, 24 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one from Balochistan and nine national assembly seats from Sindh province. The electoral body said the decision was taken follow-by Sindh, Islamabad, Peshawar and Balochistan high courts. The by-polls were scheduled to take place on March 16 and 19 after NA Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf accepted the resignations of the PTI lawmakers. The constituencies where by-elections were scheduled included: NA-04 Swat, NA-17 Haripur, NA- 18 Swabi, NA-25 and NA- 26 Nowshera, NA-32 Kohat, NA-38 Dera Ismail Khan, NA-43 Khyber, NA-52, 53, and NA-54 Islamabad, NA- 57, 59, 60, 62 and NA-63 Rawalpindi, NA-67 Jhelum, NA-97 Bhakkar, NA-126 and NA-130 Lahore, NA- 155 and NA-156 Multan, NA-191 Dera Ghazi Khan, NA-241, 242. 243, 244, 247, 250, 252, 254, and NA-256 Karachi and NA-265 Quetta. Earlier this year, the NA speaker accepted the resignations of 34 lawmakers belonging to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and one member of the Awami Muslim League, apparently in a bid to help Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif secure the possible vote of confidence. A total of 123 PTI MNAs had resigned enmasse on April 11 last year – two days after their party chairman was ousted as the prime minister through a no-confidence motion.
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