On Monday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-backed Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) will not be allocated the 77 reserved seats of the National and Provincial Assemblies.
In its reserved verdict on the reserved seats, the ECP ruled that SIC is not eligible to receive the reserved seats for women and minorities as it had not submitted the mandatory list for these seats before the general elections.
The commission’s five-member bench — headed by Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja — announced the split decision with a 4-1 majority. The electoral body stated that the SIC cannot claim a share in the reserved seats for women “due to non-curable procedural and legal defects and violations of mandatory provisions of the Constitution.”
The ECP verdict cited Article 51(6), stating that the article specifies the reserved seats would be allocated to political parties that contested elections and won general seats based on a “proportional representation system.”
The ECP, in its verdict, decided that the seats in the National Assembly and provincial assemblies would not remain vacant and would be allocated through a proportional representation process of other political parties based on seats won in the elections.
However, the ECP member from Punjab, Hassan Bharwana, partially dissented with the majority verdict, stating that while the reserved seat cannot be allocated to the SIC, it also cannot be allocated to other political parties. He mentioned that the remaining 77 seats would remain vacant.
It should be noted that the ECP has allocated reserved seats to PML-N, PPP, MQM-P, and other political parties according to their share in the assemblies. However, 77 seats, including 23 National Assembly seats, 25 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly seats, 27 Punjab Assembly seats, and 2 Sindh Assembly seats, are still vacant.
The SIC had applied to these seats; however, the ECP rejected the application and announced that the seats would go to other parties as the SIC was not legally eligible to receive them.
PTI has announced its intention to challenge the verdict in the high court, and the final decision will likely come from the high court. Presently, legal experts are divided on the issue of whether SIC can obtain the seats or not.
