PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) resumed hearings on Wednesday on the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-backed Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) request for reserved seats.
A five-member bench led by PHC Chief Justice Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, which includes Justice Ijaz Anwar, Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, Justice Shakeel Ahmad, and Justice Arshad Ali, is hearing the SIC’s appeal against the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision to deny the party reserved seats.
On March 4, 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 seats won by political parties.
The development resulted in the PTI-backed SIC losing 77 reserved seats, including 23 National Assembly seats (20 women and 3 minorities), 25 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly seats (21 women and 4 minorities), two Sindh Assembly seats (women), and 27 Punjab Assembly seats (24 women and 3 minority).
Following the ECP’s decision, the SIC obtained a stay order from the PHC, which barred the oath-taking of MPs notified of reserved seats denied to the party.
However, despite the court’s ruling, four MNAs elected to reserved seats took oaths in the lower house amid protests by the opposition benches, who were warned that neither NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq nor the legislators who were inaugurated belonged to the KP.Last Monday, PHC Chief Justice Ibrahim Khan stated that individuals who were sworn in at the National Assembly (NA) in response to the PHC ruling “did not commit contempt of court” and that the court’s stay order was limited to KP.
