Qazi Faez Isa, the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP), stated on Tuesday that if the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had conducted intraparty elections, all concerns would have been settled.
The statements were made during a hearing on the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (a PTI ally) lawsuit challenging the denial of reserved seats for women and minorities by a 13-member bench of the entire court.
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 make up the bench, which is led by Chief Justice Isa.
Prior to the February 8 elections, the PTI teamed up with the SIC to run in the polls after the highest court upheld the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) order to remove the party’s electoral emblem.
This did not, however, assist the party, as the election commission refused to grant the SIC reserved seats, citing the party’s inability to submit a list of candidates.
The party then brought the matter before the Peshawar High Court (PHC), which supported the election body’s ruling.
Together with the speaker of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, SIC leader Sahibzada Hamid Raza filed the SC in April to have the PHC ruling overturned as well as the allocation of 67 seats for women and 11 seats for minorities in the assembly.
The PHC ruling was postponed on May 6 by a three-judge Supreme Court bench led by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah and including Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah.
Since the issue required constitutional interpretation, it was then referred to the judges’ committee for the establishment of a larger bench.
