The Supreme Court suspended the decision to give the reserved seats of the Sunni Ittehad Council to other political parties.

A three-member bench of the Supreme Court heard the appeal of the Sunni Ittehad Council regarding the reserved seats.

Both the federal government and the women MLAs requested for the formation of a larger bench.
The federal government also objected to the three-member bench. Additional Attorney General Aamir Rehman pleaded that only a larger bench can hear the appeals.

Justice Mansoor Ali Shah said that a decision has to be taken on whether the appeals are admissible.
Once it is decided to be heard, then the larger bench will also look into the matter.

The counsel for the women MLAs argued that this is a case of interpretation of Article 51 of the Constitution, under the Practice and Procedure Act, the case can be heard by a five-member bench.

The court rejected the objection on the bench.

Vakil Sunni Ittehad Council said that in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, JUI was given ten reserved seats out of seven seats, PPP was given six reserved seats out of four seats and PML-N was given eight reserved seats out of five seats.All the actions of Election Commission related to specific seats should be declared illegal.

Can allocated reserved seats be re-allocated?

Justice Mansoor Ali Shah remarked that where is it written in the law that leftover seats will be allocated again among the same political parties? We need to protect public mandate. The real issue is public mandate. Can the constitutional principle of the allocation of specific seats be terminated by a technical principle? If a political party does not submit a list for specific seats, can the constitution be ignored?

Justice Mansoor Ali said that for us, no political party is relevant. The important thing is whether a political party has representation in the parliament or not. According to you, out of 82 seats, 23 are reserved. The question is whether the allocated reserved seats can be redistributed. Is it in the constitution and law? If the allocated seats cannot be redistributed, will they remain vacant?

A major political party was deprived of the electoral symbol.

Justice Athar remarked that a political party can be allocated reserved seats in proportion to the seats it has won. A major political party has been deprived of electoral symbols. Where in the law does it say that a political party cannot contest elections if it does not receive electoral symbols? PTI is a registered political party.

PTI lawyer Salman Akram Raja replied that yes, I went to the court with this question before the election.

Justice Athar remarked how the mandate of someone else could be ignored and allotted seats to other political parties without giving any reasonable reason.

Justice Mansoor Ali Shah asked the Election Commission officials whether the seats of independent candidates can be distributed to other parties. Will a political party with 6 candidates get reserved seats of 200 independent candidates?

The election commission lawyer replied that yes, that is exactly the case. The PTI women and lawyers present in the courtroom laughed at this.

Lawyer Election Commission replied that the participants in the courtroom kept laughing but this is what the constitution says, if an independent candidate does not join a political party, the seats will be distributed among other parties.

The Supreme Court, while approving the hearing of the case, suspended the decisions of the Election Commission and the High Court to grant reserved seats to parties other than the Sunni Tehreek Council. The court clarified that the suspension of the decisions would only extend to the allocation of additional seats.

The court also referred the case practice and procedure committee to constitute a larger bench.

It should be noted that the Election Commission had decided not to give special privileges to the Sunni Ittehad Council. The Peshawar High Court also upheld the decision of the Election Commission. Sunni Ittehad Council filed appeals against the decision of the Election Commission.

Tags: Federal government Sunni Ittehad Council Supreme Court