On Monday, the Supreme Court upheld the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) decision rejecting the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) claim that women’s and minority seats are reserved for the organization, which is the new home of PTI lawmakers-elect. The development occurred when a SIC appeal against the PHC ruling was taken up by a three-judge bench, led by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah and included Justices Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Athar Minallah. The Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), the new residence for PTI lawmakers-elect, filed a case with the Supreme Court on Monday challenging the denial of reserved seats for women and minorities. Independent candidates supported by the PTI had previously joined the SIC when they emerged victorious in the polls on February 8 and their party was stripped of its electoral emblem, the “bat.”
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) decided in a 4-1 decision in March that the SIC was not qualified to file a quota for reserved seats “because of non-curable legal defects and a violation of a mandatory provision of submission of party list for reserved seats.” Additionally, the panel opted to divide up the seats among other parliamentary parties, primarily benefiting the PML-N and the PPP. In the meantime, the PTI declared the ruling to be unconstitutional. Subsequently, in the same month, the PHC denied the SIC reserved seats and dismissed a SIC suit that had challenged the ECP judgment. Party leader Sahibzada Hamid Raza filed a plea with the SC in April on behalf of the SIC, requesting that the PHC ruling be overturned.
In addition to Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Usman Awan and an ECP official, lawyer Faisal Siddiqui appeared before the court today as the SIC counsel. The supreme court made it clear that the PHC judgment supporting the ECP ruling was suspended to the degree that the remaining reserved seats were allotted to other parties when it accepted the SIC appeal for hearing. Following the determination that the SIC was not qualified for the reserved seats, the ECP gave the PML-N sixteen extra seats, the PPP five, and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) four.
