Peshawar:
The Pakistani Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has filed a written petition in the Peshawar High Court (PHC), which challenges the allocation of reserved seats in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assembly. The party has requested the court to limit the newly selected members in reserved seats from making oaths until a final decision is made.
The Election Commission in Pakistan (ECP) has been named as a respondent in the petition. Following the Awami National Party (ANP) and Pakistan Tehreek-E-Insaf parliamentarians (PTIP), PML-N has also approached the court of what it expresses as an unreasonable distribution of reserved seats.
PML-N’s petition, filed through Barrister Saqib Raza, claims that the party has seven seats in the KP assembly.
However, the ECP has allegedly assigned ten reserved seats to Jamat Disadvantages Disadvantaged Islam (F) on the basis of seven general seats, while PML-N got only eight reserved seats for the same number of general seats.
The party claims that it initially won six general seats in the province, where an independent member joins its ranks within three days of the election – which made the total seven. Despite this, the ECP assigned only reserved seats compared to six general seats that the petitioner claims is unfair.
The petition calls on the court to cancel the ECP’s notification of the distribution of reserved seats and refer the Commission to revise the allocation.
