ISLAMABAD:Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan on Thursday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking lifetime ban from contesting elections on those members of parliament who commit floor- crossing.

The petition, making the Federation of Pakistan, Election Commission of Pakistan, National Assembly Speaker and others, as respondents was filed through advocate Babar Awan. The petitioner has requested the court to form ‘full court’ comprising all the judges to interpret Article 63-A of the Constitution, which deals with the defection of the lawmakers.

The petition stated that the ‘defection’, also commonly called floor crossing, was against Article 63-A of the Constitution, which states that a parliamentarian can be disqualified on grounds of defection if he “votes or abstains from voting in the House contrary to any direction issued by the parliamentary party to which he belongs. The petition maintained that floor crossing also carries along with itself moral implication and therefore erodes the trust the nation has put into the legislative organ of the state and its members.

The petition contended that a defector parliamentarian cannot “claim a vested right to have his vote counted and given equal weightage” and prayed that such tainted votes should be excluded from the vote count. He further prayed the court to declare that a lawmaker was first required to resign from his existing seat in the assembly instead of committing defection as provided in Article 63-A of the Constitution.