A full-court bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan adjourned hearing the reserved seats case on Tuesday. Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa observed that all of these issues could have been avoided if the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf had held its intra-party elections. However, Justice Muneeb remarked that Election Commission’s decision to take away the bat sysmbol had set forth a ‘cascading’ series of errors.
The bench led by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa includes Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Munib Akhtar, Yahya Afridi, Aminuddin Khan, Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Ayesha Malik, Athar Minallah, Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, Shahid Waheed, Irfan Saadat Khan and Naeem Akhtar Afghan
Justice Musarrat Hilali was not part of the bench due to illness.
The proceedings were livestreamed on the Supreme Court’s YouTube channel. The case will now be heard on June 24.
On Monday, SIC’s lawyer had presented his arguments. The SC had remarked that the people of Pakistan had voted for people nominated by a party and not individuals.
Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail questioned why the independent candidates, who were elected after contesting on the PTI platform, did not join PTI instead of the SIC (Special Independent Candidates) group. He regretted that PTI had created unnecessary hype over the denial of their election symbol ‘bat’, which had misled both voters and the party’s own members.
The judge also wondered whether the candidates, who later joined the SIC, had presented any certificate showing their affiliation with their original political party at the time of filing the nomination papers. If they had, then how could they now claim to be independent candidates?
Considering Section 66 of the Elections Act, 2017, Justice Mandokhail questioned whether the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has the authority to declare a candidate as independent when a political party had issued a certificate of affiliation.
Additionally, Justice Mandokhail asked the senior counsel Faisal Siddiqui, representing the SIC, to explain whether a candidate could expel themselves from a party after filing nomination papers from that party’s platform, and whether the political party itself could expel a candidate after they won the election. The judge stated that these questions need answers.
In response, Mr. Siddiqui argued that once the ECP accepted the SIC as a political parliamentary party, it cannot deny them the reserved seats.
“All of these returned candidates were PTI candidates forced by cascading series of errors of law by the ECP to take on the garb of independents,” Justice Akhtar observed.
The case was filed after the ECP ruled that the SUnni Ittehad Council could not be awarded the reserved seats and had distributed them to other parties instead.
