ISLAMABAD: On Monday, the Supreme Court’s whole bench heard a plea from the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), a PTI ally, contesting the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) decision to deny it reserved seats for women and minorities.
The bench, consisting of 13 justices, is led by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa. Justice Musarrat Hilali is not present owing to a cardiac condition.
The PHC ruling was suspended on May 6 by a three-judge Supreme Court bench led by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah and consisting of Justices Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Athar Minallah. The case was referred to the judges’ committee for the formation of a larger bench because it required constitutional interpretation.
The court said in its written judgement that the issues surrounding the distribution of reserved seats in the national and local legislatures bear on the fundamental constitutional tenet of parliamentary democracy, which is that the assembly’ makeup properly reflects the will of the people.
The democratic mandate requires that reserved seats be distributed in a way that both preserves the electoral process’s ideals of fairness and openness and improves the electorate’s representation in the assemblies. It stated that “it is crucial to prioritise the integrity of the elections in order to ensure that the Parliament continues to be an accurate representation of the people’s will” and allowed appeal.
After the PHC denied SIC’s request for reserved seats, the case was taken to the Supreme Court.
In addition to pleading for the high court’s decision to be overturned, SIC chief Sahibzada Hamid Raza and the speaker of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly filed appeals against the PHC’s ruling in April. They requested that the party be granted 67 seats in the assemblies for women and 11 seats for minorities.
The Election Commission of Pakistan determined after the general elections on February 8 that the SIC would not receive reserved seats for women and minorities as the SIC had not yet filed its list of candidates for those seats. The PHC affirmed the ruling as well.
Nevertheless, the PHC order was put on hold when the ruling was contested in the Supreme Court.
The ECP halted the victory notifications of 77 legislators elected to reserved seats that the SIC was not granted after receiving an order from the SC.
After the PTI-backed independent candidates, who emerged victorious in the polls on February 8, joined the Hamid Raza-led SIC, their party lost its electoral emblem, the “bat.”
But in March, the commission decided that the SIC was not eligible to claim a 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,” thwarting PTI’s bid to claim the reserved seats.
In addition to refusing SIC the allocated seats, the committee divided them up among other parties.
