Former cricket star Khan lost his majority in parliament last week as his opponents built their support in advance of the vote of no-confidence that had been due on Sunday.
But the deputy speaker of parliament, a member of Khan's party, threw out the no-confidence motion that Khan had widely been expected to lose, ruling it was part of a foreign conspiracy and unconstitutional.The move throws the nuclear-armed nation, which the military has ruled for almost half its history, into a full-blown constitutional crisis, with opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif calling the blocking of the vote "nothing short of high treason".
Alvi wrote to both Khan and Sharif, asking them to put forward names for a caretaker prime minister within three days, the president's office said in a statement.The Supreme Court could order that parliament be reconstituted, call for a new election, or bar Khan from standing again if he is found to have acted unconstitutionally.Khan says he did not act unconstitutionally, calling the move to oust him a plot orchestrated by the United States - a claim Washington denies.
The military denies involvement in civilian politics but the generals are unlikely to stand by if they thought political chaos was damaging the country or if their core interests were threatened.Reporting by Asif Shahzad and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam in Islamabad and Syed Raza Hassan in Karachi; Writing by Alasdair Pal Editing by Robert BirselSubscribe to our sustainability newsletter to make sense of the latest ESG trends affecting companies and governments.