ISLMABAD: The government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday filed a petition seeking review of last week’s ruling by the Supreme Court of Pakistan that declared former prime minister Imran Khan’s party eligible for reserved seats in parliament.
The July 12 verdict in favor of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party dealt a blow to the ruling coalition of PM Sharif, which may lose its two-thirds majority in Pakistan’s parliament. PTI candidates contested the Feb. 8 national election in Pakistan as independents after the party was barred from polls on the technical grounds that it did not hold genuine intra-party polls, which is a legal requirement.
Subsequently, they won the most seats in the election, 93, but the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) said independents were ineligible for their share of 70 reserved seats — 60 for women, 10 for non-Muslims. The reserved seats were then distributed among other parties, mostly those in the ruling coalition, a decision appealed by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) that was joined by Khan-backed independents to claim their share of reserved seats.
In its review petition, the government noted the issue of granting reserved seats to the PTI was not even in the pleadings of the SIC before the election commission, the Peshawar High Court and the Supreme Court.
“SIC and PTI are two separate political parties and two separate entities. The Order under Review, it seems has treated them as one party with different names which cannot be permissible under the Law,” the government petition read.
“It is submitted and reiterated here that PTI neither filed any case before the ECP, nor before Peshawar High Court, nor before the Supreme Court, hence it is not entitled to any relief, let alone a relief which was not even pleaded.”
The petition stated that all returned candidates had already joined the SIC and hence there was no question of giving them an option of joining the PTI that too after many months of the election. It was also against Rule 92 (6) of the Election Rules, 2017 which states that once an independent candidate has joined a political party, there is no option to recall or cancel, it added.
“The Order under Review is against the settled principles of interpretation of the Constitution. By carving out a procedure which is not provided under the Constitution, Order under Review might have gone into the realm of creating and not just interpreting the Constitution which is against the long standing jurisprudence of this Honourable Court,” the petition read.
The government requested the top court to accept the review petition for hearing and stay implementation of its order declaring the PTI eligible for reserved parliamentary 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.
The PTI is currently entitled to around 78 reserved seats in the national and provincial assemblies, which does not affect the parliamentary majority of the Sharif-led coalition government.
The July 12 verdict also bolstered political position of Khan’s supporters, whose rallying cry has been 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 ECP denies this.