PTI to emerge as largest party in Pak Parliament
Islamabad, July 12: Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Imran Khan’s party was eligible for more than 20 seats reserved for women and minorities in Parliament, in a major legal victory for the jailed former prime minister, who demanded the resignation of the election commission chief.
Candidates backed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, who had contested and won the February 8 elections as independents after their party was stripped of its election symbol, had joined the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), a political alliance of Islamic political and Barelvi religious parties in Pakistan, to form a coalition of convenience.
The SIC had filed a plea challenging the Peshawar High Court (PHC) decision upholding the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) move to deny its share in reserved seats in the assemblies.
A 13-member full bench headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa heard the case. The ruling in the keenly awaited case is viewed as a major setback to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s ruling coalition though there is no immediate threat to the federal government.
Chief Justice Isa had announced after the proceedings on Tuesday that the panel decided to reserve the verdict for mutual consultation, which it announced on Friday.
A majority of eight judges ruled in favour of SIC by overturning the orders of the top election body and the judgment of the Peshawar High Court. The judgment was announced by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah.
The court went ahead to declare “the lack or denial of an election symbol does not in any manner affect the constitutional and legal rights of a political party to participate in an election (whether general or by) and to field candidates and the Commission is under a constitutional duty to act, and construe and apply all statutory provisions, accordingly”.
The verdict further declared that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf was a political party and eligible for reserved seats. “The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was a political party, remains a political party”, the order said while instructing the PTI to submit a list of its reserved seats candidates within 15 days.
The PTI will now emerge as the largest party in the National Assembly as its seats will likely soar from 86 to 109, after it gains 23 reserved seats, Geo News reported. The opposition alliance in the National Assembly will also surge to a strength of 120, the report said. Currently, the combined opposition, including the PTI, has 97 members. Khan’s party has 86 members in the lower house, 84 of whom are on board with the SIC and two independents – party leaders Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and Omar Ayub Khan.
With the majority seats of the PTI in the lower house of the legislature, the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will continue to occupy the simple majority with the strength of 209 members. The PML-N has a total of 108 members.
The dispute about the reserved seats was related to the rejection of a SIC plea by the ECP to award its share in the 70 reserved seats in the National Assembly and another 156 in the four provincial assemblies.
PTI could not contest the Feb 8 elections as the ECP rejected its intra-party elections and deprived it of the bat symbol for contesting the elections as a party. Hence it was not eligible to claim the seats reserved for women and minorities that are awarded to the winning parties based on proportional representation.
So its candidates, who had won independently but with the support of PTI, were asked by the PTI leadership to join a SIC to form a parliamentary party to claim reserved seats.
The joining of PTI lawmakers made the SIC prominent, which otherwise was a dormant entity.
The ECP had rejected the SIC plea for reserved seats on the pretext that it had not contested the elections as a party and only got strength when the PTI-backed independently elected candidates joined its ranks after winning the elections. (PTI)