PESHAWAR: According to Geo News, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Wednesday prevented MPs from taking oaths on reserved seats denied to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC).
The directions were delivered during today’s hearing presided over by Justices Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Shakeel Ahmad. The court imposed a stay order, barring members from swearing in, and instructed the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to respond on the matter by Thursday.
The development comes as the party said that it will dispute the electoral body’s ruling, published on Monday, which rejected the SIC’s — to which the PTI-backed independent candidates had joined — plea for reserved seat distribution.
Instead, the electoral body accepted applications from opposing parties and decided that seats in the National Assembly and provincial assemblies would not be left vacant, but would be allocated through a proportional representation process based on political party seats won.
In its verdict, the ECP noted that the SIC could not claim the portion of the reserved seats for women “due to non-curable procedural and legal defects and violations of mandatory provisions of the Constitution”
All political parties, excluding the PTI-backed SIC, received reserved seats based on their strength in the assembly.
After the distribution of reserved seats, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and its allies secured a two-thirds majority (230 members) in the hiring
