ISLAMABAD: As the Supreme Court took up the case of reserved seats, Justice Munib Akhtar observed that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was “channelising returned candidates of a political party into the category of ‘independents’”.
“Are we going to be so blinded by the harsh political realities […] that if the ECP, on its own cascades of errors, was channelising, shoehorning people who are returned candidates of a political party into a ‘independent’ status […] — are we bound by that or by what mainly is the intent of the paragraph?” Justice Akhtar wondered.
His remarks came as a full court resumed hearing a petition of the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) — the new home of PTI-backed candidates — against the denial of reserved seats in assemblies for women and minorities.
A 13-member full court — comprising Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Munib Akhtar, Yahya Afridi, Aminuddin Khan, Mandokhail, Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Ayesha Malik, Athar Minallah, Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, Shahid Waheed, Irfan Saadat Khan and Naeem Akhtar Afghan — presided over the hearing.
The proceedings were broadcast live on the SC’s website and its YouTube channel.The SIC had earlier been joined by PTI-backed independent candidates after they won the Feb 8 elections as their party had been deprived of its electoral symbol ‘bat’ in an SC ruling.
In a 4-1 verdict in March, the ECP had ruled that the SIC was 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”.
The commission had also decided to distribute the seats among other parliamentary parties, with the PML-N and the PPP becoming major beneficiaries with 16 and five additional seats while the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam—Fazl (JUI-F) was given four. Meanwhile, the verdict was rejected by the PTI as unconstitutional.
Later the same month, while ruling on an SIC plea, the PHC had dismissed an SIC plea challenging the ECP decision and denied it reserved seats.On May 6, a three-member SC bench, hearing a petition filed by the SIC, suspended the PHC verdict to the extent of reserved seats distributed over and above the initially allocated ones to political parties.
