ISLAMABAD; The Supreme Court Monday suspended the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) verdict on reserved seats denied to the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC).
The PHC, in March, dismissed the SIC’s petition against the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) ruling pertaining to the reserved seats. Aggrieved by the verdict, the party had approached the apex court.
Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, who was heading the bench hearing the case, said the court is accepting the appeals for hearing and referred the matter to the judges’ committee for the constitution of a larger bench on the government’s request.
“Under which law were the seats given to other parties?” the judge asked during the hearing.
The senior judge maintained that the suspension of the verdict would only remain to the extent of additional seats.
The case
The SIC’s petition was heard by a three-member SC bench comprising Justice Shah, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah.
In March, a five-member PHC bench, headed by Chief Justice Ibrahim Khan, and comprising Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, Justice Ijaz Anwar, Justice Arshad Ali and Justice Shakeel Ahmad had rejected the SIC’s petition against ECP’s decision depriving it of reserved seats.
The electoral body had ruled that the SIC was not eligible for reserved seats allotted to women and minorities “due to non-curable procedural and legal defects and violations of mandatory provisions of the Constitution”.
While rejecting the plea of SIC, the ECP accepted applications of the opposing parties and decided that the seats in the National Assembly would not remain vacant and be allocated by a proportional representation process of political parties on the basis of seats won by political parties.
In response, the SIC moved the SC court last month urging the apex court to allot the party the 67 women and 11 minority seats in the National and provincial assemblies and set aside the PHC ruling.
The SIC’s plea contends that reserved seats for women and minorities are given to the parties in the national and provincial assemblies on the basis of proportional representation and no party can be given more reserved seats than its representation.
It is to be noted that the issue of reserved seats had been a point of contention between the SIC, which primarily comprises Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-backed independent candidates, and the ruling parties notably Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and others.
Dozens of members of the PPP, PML-N, Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) have taken oath on reserved seats following the PHC’s verdict.
More to follow…
