Pakistan court suspends ruling on parliamentary reservation for Imran Khan party
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its judgement on a batch of petitions challenging the denial of seats to the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), backed by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, the party announced.
The 13-member full bench last month began hearing a petition filed by the SIC chairman challenging the denial of seat allotment to the parties that formed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s ruling coalition after the February 8 general elections and allocation of seats to other parties.
“The Supreme Court of Pakistan has reserved its decision on the seats allotment petition and it will be announced later,” Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party told reporters.
A few weeks before the general election, the PTI was stripped of its iconic election symbol, the cricket bat, on a technicality and all of its candidates had to contest as independents. After Khan-backed independent candidates won the most seats in the general election, they joined the SIC party to win some of the seats reserved in parliament for women and religious minorities.
Under Pakistan’s electoral rules, political parties are allotted seats based on the number of seats they win in an election, giving the total number of seats in parliament 336.
After the election, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) ruled in March that Khan’s SIC party was ineligible to win any additional seats in parliament, dealing a blow to the embattled group’s power prospects and a major setback for Khan, who has been jailed since August last year.
The Election Commission’s decision was upheld by the Peshawar High Court, but the Supreme Court overturned the ruling, and the Election Commission subsequently suspended 77 members of Sharif’s ruling coalition. The coalition lost its two-thirds majority in parliament, dropping from 228 to 209 seats. A two-thirds majority in the 336-seat parliament requires 224 seats, and without this the government cannot push through constitutional reforms.
After February’s general election left the ruling party at odds with each other, Sharif formed a weak coalition with other parties. The PML-N’s 79 seats and the PPP’s 54 seats gave them a simple majority in parliament, and the coalition also included smaller parties. Khan’s candidate won the most seats, 93, but not enough to form a government.
Khan and his party have rejected the results, alleging widespread electoral fraud, a charge denied by the ECP.
