SC full court takes up SIC reserved seats case today

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court will take up today (Monday) appeals of the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assembly speaker, challenging the Peshawar High Court (PHC) verdict declining the party’s reserved seats for women and minorities in the National and provincial assemblies.

A 13-member full bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, will hear the SIC appeals at 11:30am. Justice Musarrat Hilali will not be a part of full court due to her heart ailment.

SIC head Sahibzada Hamid Raza and KP Speaker Babar Salim Swati had filed appeals in the apex court against the PHC judgment, pleading for allotment of 67 reserved seats for women and 11 for minorities in the National and provincial assemblies to the party after setting aside the PHC verdict.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had decided not to allocate reserved seats for women and minorities to the SIC, which was also upheld by the PHC on March 14.

On May 6, a three-member SC bench, headed by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and comprising Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah, while admitting for regular hearing the appeals, had suspended the ECP order as well as the PHC verdict denying the SIC reserved seats.

The bench had issued notices to parties after sending the matter to a three-member committee, constituted under the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act, 2023 for constitution of a larger bench for further hearing of the matter.

Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Usman Awan had suggested the court to send the matter to the committee for constitution of a larger bench. “The impugned judgements of the Election Commission of Pakistan and Peshawar High Court are suspended to the extent of reserved seats, given to political parties in redistribution beyond their proportion in the assemblies,” Justice Mansoor Ali Shah had noted down in the order after hearing the counsel for the parties.

The court held that the votes cast by the members so far and their opinion on the legislation would not be considered suspended, adding that the order of the court would not apply retrospectively, but from now as well.

The court had further noted that as per the Election Commission notification of April 25, 2024, 82 independent candidates, elected to the National Assembly in elections, had joined the SIC.

“Prima facie, the political parties in the parliament, who have been given reserved seats beyond their proportional representation, is unfair,” the court had observed, adding that their reserved seats distributed among other parties was against the constitutional principle of proportional representation. “We will hear the appeal from June 3 on daily basis as well,” Justice Mansoor had held.