Islamabad, 6 May 2024, (GNP): Supreme Court has temporarily halted the decision made by the Peshawar High Court regarding the reserved seat, following its acceptance of the plea filed by the Sunni Ittehad Council challenging the high court’s ruling.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had denied the party’s request, resulting in the party being deprived of reserved seats.
Justice Mansoor Ali Shah stated, “We are considering the pleas submitted by the Sunni Ittehad Council against the Peshawar High Court verdict, and questioned the legal basis for allocating reserved seats to other parties.”
A panel of three judges led by Justice Shah, with Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah, listened to the plea from the Sunni Ittehad Council, which was submitted by Advocate Faisal Siddiqui last month.
The Supreme Court announced that members who have taken oath for reserved seats will be prohibited from voting in legislative matters. Furthermore, the court stated that it will conduct daily hearings on the case starting from June 3.
Additionally, the court highlighted that the issue at hand specifically pertains to the additional reserved seats allocated to political parties subsequently.
In March, a five-member bench of the Peshawar High Court, led by Chief Justice Ibrahim Khan and including Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim, Ijaz Anwar, Arshad Ali, and Shakeel Ahmad, dismissed the Sunni Ittehad Council’s petition challenging the Election Commission of Pakistan’s decision to withhold reserved seats from the party.
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”.
The Election Commission of Pakistan, while rejecting the Sunni Ittehad Council’s plea, approved applications from opposing parties.
It determined that the seats in the National Assembly would not remain vacant and would instead be allocated through a proportional representation process based on the seats won by political parties.
In response, the Sunni Ittehad Council filed a petition with the Supreme Court last month, urging the apex court to allocate the party the 67 women and 11 minority seats in the National and provincial assemblies and overturn the ruling of the Peshawar High Court.
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The plea from the Sunni Ittehad Council argues that reserved seats for women and minorities in the national and provincial assemblies are allocated based on proportional representation, and no party should receive more reserved seats than its representation warrants.
This issue has sparked disagreement between the Sunni Ittehad Council, which is predominantly composed of independent candidates backed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, and the ruling parties, particularly the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and others.
Numerous members of the PPP, PML-N, and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) have been sworn in on reserved seats following the decision of the Peshawar High Court.
During today’s hearing, Justice Shah raised a question regarding the Election Commission of Pakistan’s decision to distribute reserved seats. He queried how political parties could secure seats beyond those for which they were eligible based on their proportional representation in the assemblies.
“Can the remaining seats be given to them [political parties]? Is there anything related to it provisioned in the law?” the judge questioned.
He further asked: “If there is no such provision in the law, then is it not against the constitutional scheme to do so?”
The judge inquired if the reserved seats can be redistributed in the second phase.
“The real issue is that of the public mandate [and] we have to protect it,” Justice Shah noted.
Meanwhile, Justice Minallah shared his perspective by questioning the legality of indirectly disregarding a political party’s mandate and also pondered about the fate of the remaining reserved seats.
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Khan reiterated his party’s trust in the judiciary and labeled the Election Commission of Pakistan’s ruling, which deprived them of reserved seats, as “unconstitutional.”
Gohar, speaking to journalists outside the Supreme Court in Islamabad, emphasized, “We consistently highlighted that we were subjected to unconstitutional treatment.”
Meanwhile, PTI leader Salman Akram Raja characterized the development as a defeat for those responsible for distorting the Constitution. “The Constitution and the law will prevail… we will persist in our struggle both in the courts and in the public,” he added.