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- May 13, 2024
- Kainat Shakeel
- 0
75 candidates who have returned to the national and provincial assemblies for reserved seats had their notices of their return suspended by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday, pending further directives. The ruling coalition’s 27 Punjab Assembly members are among the lawmakers after Speaker Malik Mohammad Ahmed Khan suspended them last week and prevented them from participating in house procedures. The decision was taken by the Supreme Court’s May 6 judgment, which suspended the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) ruling rejecting the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) minority and women’s reserved seats, according to a notification released by the ECP today.
Except for Balochistan, all provincial legislatures and the National Assembly have designated seats for women and minorities, which includes the MPs who are suspended. Eight Khyber Pakhtunkhwa women, eleven Punjab women, and three minority candidates are among the suspended MNAs. In the KP Assembly, the membership of two female and one male member on a minority seat was canceled until further orders, while 21 women and four minority MPs were suspended. There are three seats reserved for minorities and twenty-four seats for women in the Punjab Assembly, which are currently suspended by the ECP as well.
Eight KP female MNAs Eleven female MNAs from Punjab 21 women and 4 minority MNAs from the KP Assembly 24+3 (previously 27) from Punjab; 2 women; 1 minority from Sindh Assembly. Independent candidates supported by the PTI had already joined the SIC when they became victorious in the polls on February 8 and their party lost its electoral symbol, the “bat.” Due to “non-curable legal defects and a violation of a mandatory provision of submission of party list for reserved seats,” the ECP determined in a 4-1 decision in March that the SIC was not eligible to claim a quota for reserved seats.
The commission also chose how to divide the seats among the other parliamentary parties; the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Fazl received four seats, while the PML-N and PPP benefited greatly from 16 and 5 extra seats, respectively. Later that month, the PHC denied the SIC reserved seats and dismissed its suit against the ECP ruling. Party leader Sahibzada Hamid Raza persuaded the SIC to submit a case with the SC last month, asking for the PHC ruling to be overturned. The top court stated that the order only applied to the reserved seats that were dispersed over and beyond the seats that were initially allotted to the political parties, suspending the PHC and ECP rulings.