ISLAMABAD – June 18: The Supreme Court’s constitutional bench on Tuesday rejected a plea by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) seeking the allocation of reserved seats in the National Assembly based on 39 members who had declared affiliation with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) during the February 2024 general elections.
The 11-member bench, headed by Justice Aminuddin Khan, is hearing a series of petitions challenging the July 2024 majority decision that recognized PTI as a parliamentary party and dealt with the matter of reserved seats.
Earlier, in December 2023, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) invalidated PTI’s intra-party elections, a decision upheld by a three-member Supreme Court bench on January 13, 2024. Consequently, PTI-backed candidates contested the February 8 elections as independents.
Eighty of these independents later joined the SIC, aiming to claim reserved seats for women and minorities through the party. However, the ECP refused to allocate these seats to the SIC — a decision now under challenge.
In a majority ruling on July 12, the Supreme Court revived PTI’s parliamentary status, acknowledging that 39 of the 80 lawmakers had declared affiliation with PTI in their nomination papers. The remaining 41, who had not submitted such affiliation at the time, were given a 15-day window to do so.
During Tuesday’s proceedings, SIC’s counsel argued that reserved seats should at least be allotted in proportion to the 39 PTI-affiliated lawmakers. Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail noted that, according to the court’s earlier decision, the ECP was correct in denying reserved seats for the 41 unaffiliated members but not the 39 affiliated ones.
Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar questioned whether the ECP officially recognized all 39 lawmakers as PTI members and, if so, why the reserved seats were not allocated accordingly. ECP’s Director General (Law) responded that seat allocation would be based on the full group of 80 members and confirmed that no reserved seats had yet been assigned to any other party.
The ECP’s counsel cited a new law enacted after the Supreme Court’s July 13 ruling, which stipulates that political affiliation declared at the time of nomination cannot be altered later. He added that the law was applied retrospectively, and a review petition on this matter is still pending.
Ultimately, the bench dismissed SIC’s request for partial allocation of reserved seats to PTI based on the 39 lawmakers.
Earlier in the hearing, SIC’s legal representative, Faisal Siddiqui, responded to questions about extending the timeline for seat allocation by referencing a precedent from 2018. He humorously remarked that when BAP — the Balochistan Awami Party, often seen as a pro-establishment group — appeared, the ECP issued a revised schedule, adding, “After all, Baap is Baap (a father is a father).”
