Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) on Monday opposed Sunni Ittehad Council's (SIC) petition against the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) verdict that denied it reserved seats for women and minorities.
The development came as the 13-member full court bench of the Supreme Court took up the SIC's plea challenging the PHC's judgment regarding the reserved seats.
The bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa, comprised Justices 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.
On May 6, a three-member SC bench headed by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, and including Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah, suspended the PHC verdict and referred the matter to the judges' committee for the formation of a larger bench since the matter required constitutional interpretation.
The matter had ended up in the Supreme Court after the PHC had turned down SIC's plea for reserved seats.
In April, SIC chief Sahibzada Hamid Raza as well as the speaker of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly had filed appeals in the apex court against the judgment of the PHC, praying to allot the party 67 women and 11 minority seats in the assemblies, besides praying for setting aside the high court’s verdict.
Following the February 8 general elections, the Election Commission of Pakistan decided not to allocate reserved seats for women and minorities to the SIC as it had not submitted its list of candidates for those seats. The decision was also upheld by the PHC.
However, when the decision was challenged in the Supreme Court, the PHC order was suspended.
Following the SC order, the ECP suspended the victory notifications of 77 lawmakers elected on reserved seats denied to the SIC.
Hamid Raza-led SIC gained prominence after the PTI-backed independent candidates — who won in the February 8 polls — joined it as their party was deprived of its electoral symbol "bat".
However, PTI’s attempt to claim the reserved seats was thwarted in March when the commission 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 not only denied the reserved seats to SIC, it distributed them among other parties.
Advocate Faisal Siddiqui on behalf of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-backed SIC and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa advocate general appeared before the court.
Today's hearing
At the outset of the hearing, Advocate Siddiqui said that there are two different petitions before the court.
Meanwhile, the advocate general said that a petition for contempt of court has been filed against our government in the PHC for not following the court's order.
The SIC's lawyer then read out the verdict by the three-member bench in the previous hearing.
CJP Isa asked the opposing parties in the case and the beneficiaries who were made parties.
Advocate Siddiqui replied that those who have been given additional seats are the beneficiaries, adding that there are a total of 77 disputed seats.
He added that 22 National Assembly and 55 provincial assembly seats are disputed.
At this point, the CJP asked which parties got the eight seats from KP. To this, Siddiqui said PML-N received four seats while JUI-F and PPP got two seats each.
He also told the court that Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) also bagged an additional seat for women from Sindh.
PPP got two seats in the National Assembly from Punjab while PML-N got nine seats, he said.
