By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the party of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan is eligible for reserved seats in parliament, a landmark verdict that piles pressure on the fragile ruling coalition of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The court’s decision means Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party is entitled to over 20 extra seats in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.
The party had contested the February 8 general elections as independents after it was barred from the polls, but won the most seats. However, the election commission ruled they were ineligible for the 70 reserved seats for women and minorities, which are allocated to political parties only.
The seats were later allotted to other parties, mostly from those in Sharif’s ruling coalition. The PTI is expected to get up to 23 reserved seats, taking its total strength in the National Assembly to over 100.
In Pakistan, parties are allocated 70 reserved seats — 60 for women, 10 for non-Muslims — in proportion to the number of seats won in general elections. This completes the National Assembly’s total 336 seats. A simple majority in Pakistan’s parliament is 169 out of 336 seats.
The ruling coalition still has a majority in the 336-member lower house, but the verdict bolsters the political position of Khan’s supporters, who have alleged electoral fraud and questioned the transparency of the polls.
The Supreme Court set aside a pervious order of Peshawar High Court and said the ECP order declaring the PTI ineligible for reserved seats was “ultra vires of the constitution, without lawful authority and of no legal effect.”
“PTI shall be eligible for women and ministries reserved seats in parliament,” Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa said as he read the verdict in one of the petitions filed by the PTI-backed bloc. “As a political party, the PTI is entitled to its reserved seats.”
All candidates from Khan’s PTI party were forced to contest the February polls as independents after the party was stripped of its election symbol of the cricket bat by the ECP on the technical grounds that it did not hold intra-party elections, a prerequisite for any party to take part in polls.
After the election, the PTI-backed candidates were forced to join Sunni Ittehad Council, or SIC, party to claim a share of 70 reserved seats as independents are not eligible for the extra seats.
“It is declared that lack of denial of an election symbol does not in any way affect the right of a political party to participate in an election,” said the court order in one of the PTI petitions, which was supported by eight judges and opposed by five of the 13-member full court bench. “The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, PTI, was and is a party.”
The order said that elected members of the PTI could not be declared independents or candidates of the SIC and gave the PTI 15 days to submit its list of candidates entitled for reserved seats to the election commission.
The PTI has alleged that the election commission and a pro-military caretaker government that oversaw the polls indulged in electoral fraud to deprive it of a victory. The commission and military deny the charges.
The US House of Representatives and European countries have called on Islamabad to open a probe into the allegations, which Pakistan has rejected.
Khan was ousted from power in 2022 after he fell out with the country’s powerful military generals. The military denies it interferes in politics.
“This is what we have been saying, that we were robbed of our right,” said PTI chairman Gohar Khan. “The party which some people had wished to eliminate has been revived.”
The PTI said in a statement that 86 PTI-backed returned candidates in the National Assembly and 107 in the Punjab Assembly, 91 in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, and 9 in the Sindh Assembly “are entitled to be counted for the purpose of election to the reserved seats on the basis of proportional representation.”
The government will wait for the detailed judgment to decide on its course of action, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said. However, he pointed out that the petitions had been filed by the SIC but “relief” had been given by the court to the PTI, which did not file the pleas.
“A lot of confusion and questions have been born from this judgment,” he told reporters. “A situation has been created in which there is little clarity.”
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
