ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) is the only political party in Pakistan, which hopes that the overseas Pakistanis can exercise their right to vote during the upcoming general elections, it emerged on Saturday.

The other mainstream parties believe that efforts to bring those countrymen on the voter list will bear no fruit, particularly at a time when the polls are just a few months away.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) have the apprehensions that pursuing this matter a few months before the elections can create complications and any step taken in haste can generate a controversy during the elections.

Leaders of these two parties say that the PTI is pushing for the matter believing that since it receives big donations from foreign countries for its charity hospitals, all the overseas Pakistanis will vote for Imran Khan.

The PTI chairman, in a Twitter posting on Thursday, lauded Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar for ordering Nadra (National Database and Registration Authority) and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to find a way out and devise a mechanism on an urgent basis so that the overseas Pakistanis could take part in the elections due to be held in July.

While hearing the petition filed by the PTI for granting the overseas Pakistanis right to vote, the SC bench headed by Nisar had on Wednesday observed that expatriate Pakistanis should be given the opportunity to cast their votes during the 2018 elections and emphasised the need for working in this direction on emergency basis.

The bench had asked Nadra and the ECP to sit together and find a way to address the technical problems related to the matter.

“I congratulate the CJP for taking note of disfranchisement of the overseas Pakistanis and asking Nadra and the ECP to find ways to give them their right of vote. Overseas Pakistanis are our most valuable asset,” Khan tweeted.

He said that overseas Pakistanis sent $20 billion annually in remittances and they are playing a vital role in reviving and stabilising the country’s economy.

“Some of our best brains are working abroad enlightening Pakistan’s image,” he said, expressing the hope that overseas Pakistanis would play a leading role in building “Naya Pakistan” (New Pakistan).