Islamabad:
A constitutional bench (CB) of the Supreme Court rejected on Tuesday rejected a request from the Sunni Ittehad Council (sic) to allocate seats reserved for the PTI proportionally to 39 MNA which had declared themselves affiliated to the party during the filing of appointment documents for the February 2024 elections.
The CB of eleven members, led by Judge Amicin Khan, heard the petitions contesting the majority ordinance of July 2024 of July 2024 from SC to PTI.
On January 13, 2024, a bench of SC of three members confirmed the electoral commission of the Pakistan Electoral Commission (ECP) on December 22, 2023 declaring the intra-party polls of the PTI Nul and non-Avenus.
Later, the PTI candidates had to challenge the general elections of February 8, 2024 as independent.
Eighty independent candidates reached the National Assembly and then joined the SIC in an apparent offer to demand seats reserved for women and minorities. The ECP, however, refused to allocate the seats to the party, a decision that the SIC challenged before the Supreme Court.
On July 12, 2024, a complete bench of the Supreme Court through a majority of 8 to 5 raised the PTI as a parliamentary party, noting that 39 of the legislators who had submitted certificates of their affiliation with the PTI with their application documents were already PTI legislators.
The SC judged that the remaining 41 legislators who had not submitted the affiliation certificates at the time of the submission of appointment documents could now do it within 15 days.
During the last hearing, judge Jamal Khan Mandokhail had observed that the majority decision had declared 41 candidates not affiliated to a party and that the ECP was right in the case of 41 and erroneous in the case of 39. The SIC council requested the distribution of the seats reserved for the PTI on the basis of the 39 MNA.
At the hearing on Tuesday, judge Muhammad Ali Mazhar asked if the ECP had declared the 39 legislators as belonging to the PTI.
Judge Mandokhail noted that on the basis of the ratio of 80 seats, around 22 or 23 reserved seats should be allocated. Judge Mazhar asked: “If 39 members were declared as part of the PTI, then why were the reserved seats allocated according to this proportion?”
The Director General of the ECP (Act) said that the seats would be allocated on the basis of an overall figure of 80. To a question from judge Hasan Azhar Rizvi, he replied that the seats had not been allocated to any other party so far.
The ECP lawyer argued that Parliament had promulgated a law after the SC verdict on July 13, declaring that once a political affiliation had been declared in the appointment documents, it could not be changed. He added that the law had been retrospectively applied and that an examination petition on the issue was still pending.
Later, the constitutional bench of the Supreme Court officially rejected the request for implementation of its decision concerning the distribution of seats reserved for PTI for the 39 members of the Assembly.
Earlier, Faisal Siddiqui responded to the objection concerning the extension of the calendar for reserved seats. He said that after the 2018 elections, the ECP had published a new calendar.
Using a play on words, he said that when Bap – the Balutchistan Awami party, which is generally considered to be the King’s party – presented itself, the calendar was issued. “After all, Baap is Baap (a father is a father),” he added.
