ISLAMABAD: After the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), its coalition partner Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has also filed a review petition against the Supreme Court verdict that awarded reserved seats to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
On behalf of the PPP, Farooq H Naek filed the plea seeking to overturn the July 12 verdict of the apex court on reserved seats for women and non-Muslims.
In its appeal, the PPP objected to the award of reserved seats to the PTI on the grounds that the former ruling party had no claim to them.
The PML-N filed a review petition against the same judgment in the Supreme Court on July 15. The review petition raised a number of questions, including whether SIC should be granted reserved seats.
The decision not only paved the way for the return of the PTI to Parliament, which was kicked out of the February 8 polls due to the December 2023 decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), but also increased pressure on the coalition alliance by changing the composition of the National Assembly.
The 8-5 majority verdict declared that the absence or denial of an election symbol in no way affects the constitutional or statutory rights of a political party to participate in elections, whether general or by-election, and to field candidates, and that the commission has a constitutional duty to apply all statutory provisions reasonably.
The PPP asked the SC to set the hearing of the review application as soon as possible as “the impugned order has set a strict time limit of 15 days” and if the order is implemented, the plea will become moot.
The political party said the SC verdict was silent on the main controversy in the case of reserved seats, which was whether the reserved seats should be given to the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC); whether mandates can be granted to a political party that has not submitted a party manifesto within the specified period; if reserved seats can be allocated to a political party whose candidates have not even filed their nomination papers; whether independents can even join a political party that has not won a single general seat in parliament; whether the seats can be left vacant or need to be distributed among the political parties running for the seats, and what is the “system of proportional representation of the political parties’ candidate lists”.
Similar issues were raised by the PML-N in its plea as well.
