ISLAMABAD: Holding Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan solely responsible for all the crises being faced by the country, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah has said it is imperative to oust the defiant leader from the political arena. Talking to journalists outside the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday, the security czar said: “A fitna [Imran Khan] has first created a political and administrative crisis and now judicial issues and that is why it becomes all the more important to oust him from politics.” There is a need to probe how the PTI chief was “launched” in politics and the judiciary should also play its role in that regard, he added. He said that the top court’s Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail had recused himself from the bench hearing the case pertaining to elections in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) writing a dissenting note. It was an irony that the nine-member bench had been reduced to just three members now, Sanaullah added. The PTI leader wanted chaos in the country, the federal minister said, adding that the two provincial assemblies were not dissolved constitutionally as the respective chief ministers were not willing to do so. Berating the deposed prime minister — who was removed from power via a no-confidence vote in April last year — the PML-N senior leader said that he was rather an “arrogant and stubborn” person who made them dissolve the assemblies for his “nefarious agenda”. Sanaullah further said the decision of a two-member bench headed by Justice Qazi Faez Isa regarding the suo motu powers “cannot be disregarded by the circular of the Registrar’s Office”. There was no such precedent as the registrar’s circular prevailed in the face of a bench’s decision, he added. The interior minister suggested that a full court bench should be formed to decide the provincial assemblies’ election case. The matter must be resolved “in a win-win situation for all”.
