ISLAMABAD: Ibrahim, Justice Ijaz Anwar, Justice Arshad Ali, and Justice Shakeel Ahmad, rejected the SIC’s petition against the ECP’s decision to deny it reserved seats.
The ECP had determined that the SIC was ineligible for reserved seats allotted to women and minorities due to procedural and legal defects and violations of constitutional provisions.
Rejecting the SIC’s plea, the ECP accepted applications from opposing parties, deciding that National Assembly seats would not remain vacant and would be allocated through a proportional representation process based on seats won by political parties.
In response, the SIC approached the Supreme Court last month, urging it to allocate the party the 67 women and 11 minority seats in the National and provincial assemblies and overturn the PHC ruling.
The SIC’s plea argues that reserved seats for women and minorities are given to parties in the national and provincial assemblies based on proportional representation, and no party can be given more reserved seats than its representation.
The issue of reserved seats had been a point of contention between the SIC, primarily comprising Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-backed independent candidates, and the ruling parties, notably Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and others.
Following the PHC’s verdict, dozens of members of the PPP, PML-N, and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) took oath on reserved seats.
I am an experienced writer, analyst, and author. My exposure in English journalism spans more than 28 years. In the past, I have been working with daily The Muslim (Lahore Bureau), daily Business Recorder (Lahore/Islamabad Bureaus), Daily Times, Islamabad, daily The Nation (Lahore and Karachi). With daily The Nation, I have served as Resident Editor, Karachi. Since 2009, I have been working as a Freelance Writer/Editor for American organizations.
