By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Wednesday accused retired Supreme Court judge Mansoor Ali Shah of giving a selective and one-sided account of the 2023 ruling on elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and of the case over the PTI’s reserved seats.
In a statement, the electoral watchdog said Justice (retd) Shah’s remarks ignored “basic constitutional and legal facts related to the election matters and judicial decisions”.
“It is highly inappropriate to present the judicial record for specific purposes through selective quotations, incomplete perspectives and one-sided interpretations,” the statement said.
Shah, who was the Supreme Court’s senior puisne judge before he resigned, spoke at an event organised by the US-based Community Alliance for Peace and Justice on October 29. He was asked whether his dissent in the 2023 ruling on provincial elections was a “turning point” and the beginning of a “division” within the court.
The ECP said Shah had claimed that the court’s majority decision on the 2023 polls was in fact a 4-3 verdict, and that the suo motu notice and the related petitions had been dismissed. By that reading, the commission said, the election ruling would be a “minority decision” and the ECP could not have held polls under it.
The 2023 ruling
The Supreme Court, in a 3-2 verdict after taking suo motu notice, directed that elections be held within 90 days in both provinces. Shah and Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail dissented, calling the proceedings initiated by then-chief justice Umar Ata Bandial “wholly unjustified” and begun with “undue haste”.
In their detailed reasoning, the two judges argued that the court had in fact dismissed the suo motu hearing by a 4-3 majority, and that this should therefore be treated as the “Order of the Court”.
The dispute became a political fight. The government claimed the ruling was a 4-3 decision in its favour, not a 3-2 verdict against it.
Responding to the question at the event, Shah said the then-chief justice was forming “like-minded benches” at the time, with three or four judges attending to the majority of cases.
He said the matter had first been taken up by the high courts. Supreme Court judges, he said, gathered in the ante-room and told the chief justice that suo motu notice should not be taken at that point. It was “agreed” to wait, Shah said, but days later a bench took up the matter under suo motu powers, which he denounced as a “one-man show”.
Shah said two judges, Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Athar Minallah, had dismissed the petitions in the case. The bench was later reconstituted, he said, and two judges had by then already decided the matter, which he said gave rise to the 4-3 versus 3-2 debate.
The ECP rejected that reading. The commission’s spokesperson said the Supreme Court’s majority verdict was a 4-3 decision and that the suggestion that the suo motu proceedings and the petitions had been dismissed was legally inaccurate. The ECP said it was bound to act in accordance with the court’s order.
Symbol and reserved seats
Shah also defended the 2024 verdict in the reserved seats case, which declared the PTI eligible for seats reserved for women and minorities and was a setback to the ruling coalition. A 13-member bench passed the ruling by an 8-5 majority, and Shah wrote the detailed judgment.
“We said that the PTI was a political party and it was wrong to deprive [them of their symbol] … and illegal,” he said, recalling that this was a decision “that nobody liked”.
The ECP said Shah had declared the withdrawal of the PTI’s electoral symbol before the 2024 elections to be illegal. The commission said an election symbol depends on transparent intra-party elections under Sections 208 and 209 of the Elections Act 2017, and that “till date, PTI has not been able to fulfil the requirement”.
According to the ECP, the PTI was due to hold intra-party elections by June 30, 2021. It said it gave the party three chances, but the party failed to hold the polls. The symbol was withdrawn as a result, the commission said, and the Supreme Court upheld the decision in 2025 while rejecting the PTI’s review petitions.
The ECP said the PTI did hold intra-party elections after five years, but the proceedings remain pending before the commission because “PTI itself has taken a stay order from a high court”. The commission’s records still list the PTI as a political party, it added.
On the reserved seats, the ECP said only political parties that contested the elections had a right to them, and that such parties must submit a preferred list of candidates before polling. “These political parties are required to submit a preferred list of candidates before the elections, while PTI has not submitted any preferred list,” it said.
The commission said a party must win at least one seat to qualify and that independent members are not entitled to reserved seats. It said it therefore gave the seats to the eligible parties.
If the PTI were held entitled to the reserved seats, the ECP said, “Articles 51 and 106 of the Constitution and Section 104 of the Elections Act 2017 become ineffective”.
The ECP said it was “unfortunate” that a retired judge was taking a position against the Constitution and the law.
In its detailed judgment in September 2024, the Supreme Court majority had itself criticised the ECP over its conduct in the case.
Shah resigned from the Supreme Court in November 2025, alongside Minallah. He did so hours after President Asif Ali Zardari signed the 27th Constitutional Amendment into law. The amendment made significant changes to the judicial system and established the Federal Constitutional Court.
“By fracturing the unity of the nation’s apex court, it has crippled judicial independence and integrity, pushing the country back by decades,” Shah wrote in his letter to the president.
“Staying on would not only amount to silent acquiescence in a constitutional wrong, but would also mean continuing to sit in a court whose constitutional voice has been muted,” he said.
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