Members of the Sunni Ittehad Council staged a raucous protest in the Punjab Assembly on Friday as the last remaining reserved seat members took oath in the house.

Speaker Malik Ahmad Khan is presiding over the session which began with a delay of over one and a half hour.

However, the SIC burst into protest as 24 members on reserved seats belonging to the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz were sworn in.

Members of the SIC held up posters with Imran Khan’s photos on them and surrounded the speaker’s dais.

On his part, the speaker tried to calm down the opposition and told them to protest as much as they wanted on their side of the house.

The SIC had applied for reserved seats for women and minorities, which are awarded according to proportion in the assemblies.

However, the Election Commission of Pakistan denied the seats to the party, saying that it had not submitted a list of candidates before hand. The remaining reserved seats were awarded to other parties in the assembly.

The party then approached the Peshawar High Court, which has issued a stay order against the reserved seat members from taking oath. However, the stay order, which is valid till March 13, is only applicable to the National and KP assemblies.

The party said that it plans to file a petition in the Lahore High Court for the reserved seats in Punjab Assembly.