Islamabad:
A constitutional bench (CB) from the Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the request of one of the PTI advice to postpone hearing the reserved seats cases until August and noted that the bench intended to hear the case daily.
Previously, Salman Akram Raja resumed his arguments in support of July 12, 2024, the majority order of a full SC bench. He referred to the SC judgment in the Sindh High Court Bar case, as he said, serves as an example of how SC can intervene for the restoration of the Constitution.
“After the emergency introduced on November 3, 2007, several actions were taken, but the Supreme Court declared that emergency situations that were untreated and all actions taken in its demand were also canceled.”
“The court had decided that the judges appointed after the emergency had no legitimate status, and their removal of sitting judges was also declared illegal; the removed judges were reinstated.”
During the consultation, Raja also referred to the distribution of reserved seats in the 2013, 2013, 2018 and 2024 elections. He said the record shows that the political party, which won general seats, received reserved seats in roughly the same share.
“However, the situation is different in the recent parliamentary elections. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a party [PTI] It secured 83% of the general seats were assigned zero reserved seats, ”he said.
Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail asked Raja how can the Supreme Court prevent any politician from contesting elections independently.
“Suppose Imran Khan, Nawaz Sharif, Asif Zardari, Bilawal Bhutto or Maulana Fazlur Rehman – to be big party leaders – decides to compete independently, how can we prevent them?” He asked.
Justice Musarrat Hilali stated that losing an electoral symbol does not mean that the political party’s registration is canceled. PTI candidates joined Sunni Itthad Council (SIC), but that Sic was not present in parliament, she said.
Justice Mandokhail noted that Raja cited Sindh High Court Bar Association case, but in this case the facts were undisputed.
Justice Hasan Azhar Rizvi commented that a political party in 1985 non-party elections called himself ‘awam dost’. “Did you introduce such an expression [for the PTI for the polls]”The lawyer replied that PTI introduced the phrase” Captaan ka sipahi “.
Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar observed that there seemed to be a lack of coordination within PTI. Justice Mandokhail added that it seemed that the 39 members of the assembly opening their association with PTI were more sensible. “” Either they were more sensible – or they had a higher tolerance for pressure, “praised Justice Hilali.
In a remembering former political events, SIC’s lawyer Hamid Khan said the decision in the PTI election in the election was announced the very best day for the award of electoral symbols.
“It was a Saturday – a vacation – but the case was heard until 23 o’clock that night. Our candidates were still waiting to wonder what the verdict would be. At midnight, our electoral symbol was taken away from us and the deadline for symbolic allocation adopted. Where did we stand?
He said the ECP gave more time to the AP despite the fact that the AP had not even held any choice “we had held elections, but the ECP did not accept them. We urged it to finish us if necessary, but it removed us from our electoral symbol. On the same day, ANP and PTI were treated differently,” he said.
Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar replied that ANP was given an opportunity for the first time, while PTI had already had several years. “Your party constitution was made more foolproof – we can even say it’s better than others,” he noted
Hamid Khan noted that it appeared that PTI was punished for drafting a better constitution. CB also rejected Hamid Khan’s request to postpone the case until August. The court resumes the hearing at. 9.30 today.
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.
As a consequence of the SC judgment and its erroneous interpretation of the ECP, 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.
