The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, Secretary General Asad Umer, and Fawad Chaudhry received letters from the Supreme Court on Tuesday in response to the Election Commission of Pakistan’s appeal asking for the aggregation of all PTI petitions against its contempt notices.
The preliminary hearing for the petition submitted by the Election Commission of Pakistan was conducted by a three-member bench of the Supreme Court, which was presided over by Chief Justice Umer Ata Banidal and included Justices Ayesha A. Malik and Athar Minallah (ECP).
The Supreme Court gave notice to Imran Khan, Asad Umer, and Fawad Chaudhry and accepted the ECP petition for a regular hearing.
On October 13, the Election Commission of Pakistan filed a petition in the Supreme Court asking the court to transfer and combine six petitions that Imran Khan, the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and others had filed to challenge the Election Commission’s contempt notices in various high courts.
In the interests of swift resolution and fairness, it had asked the Supreme Court to transfer and combine the six cases currently pending before any high court.
The ECP claimed that in August and September 2022, it issued notices in the course of exercising its contempt powers, and that the recipients of these notices invoked the constitutional jurisdiction of various high courts under Article 199 in opposition to the notices and contempt proceedings through four separate petitions, among other reasons, on the grounds that Section 10 of the Elections Act, 2010, the statute governing the Election Commission’s authority to punish for violations of the law, was unconstitutional.
Imran Khan, Asad Umer, and Fawad Chaudhry, the chairman of the PTI, received notices from the court and postponed the hearing for date-in-office (indefinite period).
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