Islamabad: Justice Aisha A Malik of the Supreme Court of Pakistan said on Tuesday that reserved seats cannot be allocated against the principle of proportional representation.
Justice Malik said this while hearing a petition filed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) allied Sunni Ittehad Council (PTI) against the denial of reserved seats for women and minorities.
The hearing was presided over by a 13-member full bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Faez Jesus.
Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Muneeb Akhtar, Justice Yahya Afridi, Justice Amin-ud-Din Khan, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Justice Malik, Justice Athar Minallah, Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, Justice Shahid bar Waheed, Justice Irfan Saadat Khan and Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghani.
Meanwhile, Justice Minallah said women and minorities should be represented in Parliament.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had earlier intervened but the SC did not help them, he said.
“It happened like it was 2018,” Justice Minallah said. Justice Minallah said he did not learn from the court’s history.
The judge said there will be times in the future when he will regret the Supreme Court’s decision.
Retail seat issues
The PTI-backed independent candidate, who won the February 8 polls, joined forces with the SIK to demand reserved seats for minorities and women.
However, the election did not help the party because it did not allocate a reserve seat to SIK because it did not enter the list of candidates.
The party later appealed to the PHC on the matter, which upheld the court’s ruling on the electoral body.
In April, SIK chairman Sahibzada Hamid Raza, and speaker of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, moved the SC to block the PHC order and allotment of 67 women and 11 minority seats in the Assembly.
On May 6, a three-judge SC bench headed by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, along with Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah, upheld the PHC decision.
The matter was then referred to the Judiciary Committee to constitute a larger bench as the matter required constitutional interpretation.
Meanwhile, the ECP last week responded to the apex court stating that the SIK would not be eligible for the reserved seat as the political court did not allow entry into the non-Muslim section.
The ECP informed the apex court that the reserved seat could not be given to SIK as the party failed to submit its list of candidates before January 24.
