Fawad says PTI MNAs to resign from National Assembly today.

ISLAMABAD -- Senior Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader and former information minister Fawad Chaudhry has announced that his party would resign en masse from the National Assembly today (Monday), a day after former prime minister Imran Khan lost his government via a successful no-confidence move.

The decision to resign was tied up with the acceptance of PML-N President Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif's nomination papers for prime minister's elections, to which the PTI had raised objections. In a later development, the NA Secretariat rejected the objections and accepted Shehbaz's nomination.

Talking to the media in Islamabad with a host of other PTI leaders and officials, Fawad Chaudhry said a meeting of the PTI's central core executive committee (CEC) was held in Bani Gala with Imran Khan where "the whole situation was analysed".

He said the CEC recommended to Imran Khan that the PTI should resign from the assemblies starting with the National Assembly. "If our objections on Shehbaz Sharif's [nomination] papers are not addressed then we will resign tomorrow," he said.

Elaborating on the PTI's decision to nominate its Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi for the prime minister's position after a successful vote of no-confidence against Imran Khan, Fawad Chaudhry said that contesting the election offered the party a way to challenge Shehbaz's nomination papers.

He said it was a "great injustice" that Shehbaz would be contesting the election for the prime minister on the same day he is to be indicted in a money laundering case.

"What can be more insulting for Pakistan that a foreign selected and foreign imported government is imposed on it and a person like Shehbaz is made its head," he rued.

Referring to the situation around the successful no-trust vote, Fawad Chaudhry said that there were no "two opinions" in the PTI's CEC meeting that it was anything other than a "very big conspiracy".

"It was a foreign regime change operation that happened here," he said. "We think this is a slap on [the face of] people of Pakistan. We reject it. The whole nation expects leadership from Imran Khan and expects from PTI that they'll come out on streets [against] this foreign conspiracy."

On the PTI CEC and Imran Khan's behalf, he appealed to the public to come out and protest after Isha prayers in their respective district headquarters.

Fawad haudhry said that if the PTI "disappointed people" now and Khan did not lead a massive movement then it would amount to a...