Peshawar, March 7: A Pakistani high court on Thursday extended till March 13 the stay order on the oath-taking of those candidates who were allotted reserved seats in the National Assembly that ex-premier Imran Khan’s party-backed SIC has claimed should have been given to it.
A two-member bench of the Peshawar High Court was hearing the case filed by the 71-year-old former prime minister Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) about the allotment of reserved seats to women and minority.
On Monday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) ruled that former-cricketer-turned-politician Khan’s PTI-backed SIC is not eligible for the reserved seats allotted to women and minorities in Parliament and their share of seats should be allocated to other parties.
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In its ruling, the ECP stated that the SIC could not claim the share in the reserved seats for the women “due to non-curable procedural and legal defects and violations of mandatory provisions of the Constitution.”
After the February 8 general elections, almost all 93 independently elected candidates backed by the PTI joined the right-wing SIC to receive its share of reserved seats for women and minorities.
A total of 266 seats of the lower House of Parliament were up for grabs out of the 336, while 60 seats were reserved for women and 10 for minorities. The reserved seats are allotted proportionately to the winning parties based on their numbers.
Hearing the case on Thursday, the PHC bench adjourned the case till March 13 and summoned the Attorney General for Pakistan, Mansoor Usman Awan, to appear before the court on the next hearing.
On Wednesday, the PHC issued a stay order preventing members from swearing in on the reserved seats and directed the top electoral body to submit its response by Thursday.
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which initially had 107 seats in the National Assembly, got 15 out of the remaining 20 reserved seats for women and one out of the three remaining seats reserved for minorities after the distribution of reserved seats denied to the PTI-backed SIC.
Its tally thus reached 123 seats, making it the largest party in the lower House of the Parliament.
The number of seats of the former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari-led Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) also rose to 73 from the earlier 68 as it was allocated four more seats reserved for women and one for minorities.
Though the PTI-backed independents won majority seats at the 266-member National Assembly, the PML-N and the PPP agreed on a power-sharing deal to form a new coalition government.
The PML-N Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was elected as the cash-strapped country’s prime minister for a second time.
Khan’s party has rejected the attempts by the PML-N and the PPP to form a coalition government, warning that robbing its public endorsement by the “mandate thieves” will result in the worst political instability. (PTI)
