ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa said that the Supreme Court shouldn’t be blamed for everything as all issues would have been resolved if the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had conducted its intra-party elections.
The CJP’s remarks came as a full court 13-member bench heard the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC), an ally of the PTI, petition against the denial of reserved (women and minorities) seats.
The CJP-led bench includes Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Munib Akhtar, Yahya Afridi, Aminuddin Khan, Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Ayesha Malik, Athar Minallah, Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, Shahid Waheed, Irfan Saadat Khan and Naeem Akhtar Afghan.
The PTI had joined hands with the SIC ahead of the February 8 elections to contest the polls after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) stripped the party of its electoral symbol, a decision upheld by the top court.
However, this did not help the party as the election commission did not allocate reserved seats to the SIC, citing its failure to submit its list of candidates.The party had then approached the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on the said issue wherein the court upheld the electoral body’s decision.
In April, SIC chief Sahibzada Hamid Raza, along with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly speaker, moved the SC seeking setting aside of the PHC verdict and the allocation of 67 women and 11 minority seats in the assemblies.
On May 6, a three-member SC bench headed by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, including Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah, suspended the PHC verdict.It then referred the matter to the judges’ committee for the formation of a larger bench since the matter required constitutional interpretation.
During the hearing, SIC’s lawyer Advocate Faisal Siddiqui argued that although the SIC didn’t contest the elections as a party, independent candidates did in fact participate in the polls.The counsel further stressed that the SIC did submit the list of its candidates but the ECP rejected it, saying that the party didn’t contest the polls.
CJP Isa highlighted that SIC had shown itself as a parliamentary political party on two occasions and a political party on one.
