SC suspends ECP, PHC's verdict on SIC reserved seats

ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court (SC) on Monday suspended the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and Peshawar High Court’ (PHC) verdict on Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) reserved seats, ARY News reported.

The three-member bench headed by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, comprising Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah suspended the verdict pertaining to the allocation of reserved seats to other political parties.

Justice Mansoor Ali Shah said that the case has been fixed for hearing and “we are suspending the ECP and PHC verdicts.”

Shah said that today’s suspension verdict only applies to the allocation of additional seats. He emphasized that the people’s mandate should be represented correctly in Parliament.

Justice Athar Minallah observed that a political party can still contest elections even if it loses its electoral symbol.

It is worth mentioning here that the Peshawar High Court (PHC) earlier dismissed petitions of the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) over reserved seats in assemblies.

A five-member bench of the high court gave unanimous decision on the petition as Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim read the reserved verdict.

ECP verdict

Prior to this, Election Commission of Pakistan rejected the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) petition, seeking the allocation of reserved seats following a ‘merger’ with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) for this specific purpose.

In the verdict, the ECP said the SIC is not entitled to claim quota for reserved seats due to having “non curable legal defects and violation of a mandatory provision of submission of party list for reserved seats which is the requirement of law”.

“The seats in the National Assembly shall not remain vacant and will be allotted by proportional representation process of political parties on the basis of seats won by political parties,” the order said.

Reserved seats 

The election commission distributed the reserved seats for women and minorities among other political parties.

In the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly – according to a notification, the ECP allocated one reserved seat each to Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Pakistan, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

In Sindh Assembly – allocated reserved seat for women to Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and PPP. PPP’s Samita Afzal and MQM-P’s Fouzia Hameed elected on reserved seats.

Furthermore, PPP’s Sadhu Mal alias Surinder Valasai secured minority seat in Sindh Assembly.

The ECP allocated three reserved seats for minorities to PML-N, PPP and JUI-F – which were claimed by Sunni Ittehad Council. PML-N’s Neelam Meghwar, PPP’s Ramesh Kumar and JUI-F’s James Iqbal were elected on the minority seats.

SIC reserved seats

PTI candidates contested the elections as independents after the Supreme Court upheld the election supervisor’s decision, considering its intra-party polls “unconstitutional” and revoked its claim on the electoral symbol of ‘bat’.

As per the Constitution, the reserved seats are allocated to the political parties on the basis of the number of their lawmakers elected on the general seats. For their allocation, the ECP had already received the priority list of candidates from the parties before the Feb 8 polls.

The situation this year is different from the previous elections as the largest group of lawmakers are independents, who cannot have the reserved seats.

There are a total of 346 reserved seats for women – 60 in the NA and 66, 29, 26, and 11 in the provincial legislatures of Punjab, Sindh, K-P, and Balochistan.

Similarly, there are 10 reserved seats for minorities in the lower house. Besides, eight, nine and three reserved seats for minorities in the Punjab Sindh, and Balochistan assemblies respectively.