THE case of the PTI for allocation of reserved seats for women and minorities received a serious setback when the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Thursday upheld the Election Commission’s decision on the matter and unanimously dismissed the writ petitions filed by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), which is umbrella party of the PTI. Earlier this month, the electoral watchdog ruled that the SIC was not entitled to claim quota for reserved seats “due to having non curable legal defects and violation of a mandatory provision of submission of party list for reserved seats which is the requirement of law”.
The verdict of the Peshawar High Court is a seal of approval to the merit-based decision of the Election Commission, which was unnecessarily criticized and pressurized by the PTI on the issue. It also highlights that the case and the plea of the PTI was legally defective and it was trying to compensate for its flawed policy by laying focus on political aspects. The PHC had given a stay order against oath-taking of the members nominated against the reserved seats (which theoretically should have gone to PTI) and therefore objected to oath-taking of such members in the National Assembly knowing fully well that the PHC jurisdiction was limited to KP only. Now that stay has also been lifted after the unanimous view of the five-member bench of the court that the decision of the ECP was maintainable. It is a sorry state of affairs that the leadership of the PTI was effectively in the hands of some senior legal brains but the party could not formulate a legally maintainable policy on the matter. As pointed out by Justice Syed Arshad Ali, there was a difference between the PTI and SIC – the PTI had no election symbol but the SIC had one but both did not take part in the general elections. The judge asked the SIC counsel if the PTI-backed independents did not know that the SIC had not submitted lists for reserved seats to the ECP when they joined this party. He said reserved seats were allotted to a party only when it had a representation in parliament. The court has also rejected the plea of the PTI that the disputed reserved seats cannot be allocated to other parties, which means, notwithstanding the intentions of the party to agitate the issue before the Supreme Court, it will have to accept the ECP verdict as fait accompli. From intra-party elections to distribution of reserved seats PTI erred and it should own mistakes and review its policies.
