ECP suspends membership of 271 lawmakers

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has suspended the membership of as many as 271 lawmakers over their failure to submit details of their assets and liabilities, ARY News reported on Monday.

According to details, the electoral watchdog suspended the membership of 271 lawmakers after they failed to submit the statement of their assets and liabilities that is required by the ECP at the year-end.

The parliamentarians suspended by the ECP include 136 members of the National Assembly, 21 from the Senate, 54 from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly, 48 from the Sindh Assembly and 12 from the Balochistan Assembly.

As per the notification, the suspended members include Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leaders Ahsan Iqbal, Khawaja Asif and Mohsin Ranjha, and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Convener Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui.

The election commission has forwarded the lists of the members to the respective speakers of the houses, asking them to ensure the listed members stop working.

The ECP said that lawmakers cannot participate in parliamentary proceedings and their membership will remain suspended until they submit their respective statements.

Earlier in January, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had given a deadline to the parliamentarians for submitting the details of their assets by January 15.

The ECP released a list of parliamentarians from the Lower and Upper Houses, as well as from the provincial assemblies who failed to submit asset details.

The commission stated in a notification that some lawmakers did not submit their statements of the assets despite the expiry of the December 31 deadline. It asked the lawmakers to submit the details of their assets to the ECP by January 15, otherwise, their membership will be suspended on January 16.

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The list showed that several federal ministers have not submitted their statements of assets so far. The federal ministers included Religious Affairs Mufti Abdul Shakoor, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Khawaja Asif, Ahsan Iqbal, Ayaz Sadiq, Mohsin Shahnawaz Ranjha, Syed Basit Sultan Bukhari, Khursheed Shah, Agha Hussain Toori.

Fawad Chaudhry, Shafqat Mahmood, Ali Nawaz Awan, Asad Umar, Asad Qaiser, Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Omar Ayub Khan from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) were also named on the list.