Islamabad:
A constitutional bench (CB) from the Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request from Sunni Itthad Council (SIC) to award reserved seats to PTI compared to 39 MNAs who had declared themselves to be affiliated with the party while submitting nomination papers to Feb 2024 selection.
Eleven member CB, led by Justice Aminuddin Khan, heard the petitions challenge SC’s majority order July 2024 for the allocation of reserved seats to PTI.
On January 13, 2024, an SC bench with three members maintained the Election Commission for Pakistans (ECP) 22 December 2023 order, declaring PTI’s Intra-Party vote invalid.
Later, the PTI candidates had to contest on February 8, 2024 the parliamentary elections as independent.
Eight such independent candidates reached the National Assembly and later joined SIC in an apparent bid to demand reserved seats for women and minorities. However, the ECP refused to assign the seats to the party, a decision that SIC contested in the Supreme Court.
On July 12, 2024, a full bench of the pointed right through a majority of 8 to 5 PTI as a parliamentary party resurfaced, noting that 39 of the legislators who had submitted certificates for their association with PTI with their nomination papers were already PTI legislators.
SC stated that the remaining 41 legislators who had not submitted the attachment certificates at the time of the nomination papers could do so within a period of 15 days.
At the last hearing, justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail had observed that the majority decision declared 41 candidates as affiliated with any party, and the ECP was just in the event of 41 and wrong in the event of 39.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar asked if the ECP had declared all 39 legislators as belonging to PTI.
Justice Mandokhail noted that based on the 80 -seat ratio, about 22 or 23 reserved seats should be awarded. Justice Mazhar asked, “If 39 members have been declared as part of PTI, why aren’t the reserved seats assigned according to this share?”
The ECP Head of Director (Law) said that seats would be assigned based on a unified figure of 80. For a request for justice Hasan Azhar Rizvi he replied that the seats have not been assigned to any other party so far.
The ECP’s lawyer claimed that Parliament had passed a law after SC’s judge on July 13, saying that when a political affiliation was declared in the nomination papers, it could not be changed. He added that the law was used retrospectively and there was still a petition about petition about the case.
Later, the Supreme Court’s constitutional bench formally rejected the request to enforce its decision to allocate reserved seats to PTI for the 39 assembly members.
Previously, Faisal Siddiqui responded to the objection to the extension of the timeline of reserved seats. He said the ECP after the 2018 election issued a new schedule.
By hiring a pun, he said when BAP – Balochistan Awami party, which is generally considered the king’s party – emerged, the schedule was issued. “After all, Baap is baap (a father is a father),” he added.
