Daily Times

Following in the footsteps of its coalition partner PML-N, the PPP has filed a review petition challenging the Supreme Court’s verdict on the reserved seats case, it emerged on Tuesday.

In a landmark ruling on July 12, the top court had declared Imran Khan’s PTI eligible for seats reserved for women and minorities, dealing a major setback to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s ruling alliance. The verdict means that the PTI is poised to become the single largest party in the National Assembly.

The court had given its verdict after hearing a set of appeals moved by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) against the denial of the reserved seats to it by the Pesha­war High Court (PHC) and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

PTI-backed candidates, who had contested and won the February 8 elections as independents after their party was stripped of its election symbol, had joined the SIC to form a coalition of convenience.

The SC annulled the PHC’s decision and declared the election regulator’s ruling null and void, citing it as unconstitutional.

The PPP’s petition contended that the court’s short order following the verdict failed to address the key controversy: whether the SIC should be allocated the reserved seats or if independent candidates could join a party that did not win any general seats in Parliament.

Filed through Advocate Farooq Naek, the petition further questioned whether reserved seats could be granted to a political party whose candidates had not even filed nomination papers within the time frame provided in the election schedule.

“By carving out a procedure which is not provided under the Constitution, the order under review might have gone into the realm of creating and not just interpreting the Constitution which is against the long-standing jurisprudence of this Honourable Court”, the petition stated. “It has been stated innumerable times by this Court that the function of the Court is interpretation, not legislation.”

The petition argued that the issue of granting the reserved seats to PTI “was not even in the pleadings of the SIC”, and therefore could not be granted by the SC.

It further said that the 15-day grace period given to the 41 independent candidates to join a political party was in “stark contradiction” to the Constitution.

“PTI neither filed any case before the ECP, nor before Peshawar High Court, nor before the Supreme Court, hence, it is not entitled to any relief, let alone a relief which was not even pleaded,” the petition argued.

The short order, the petition said, had not taken into account that the 80 MNAs had filed their nomination papers as independent candidates and thereafter joined the SIC.

“None has even come forward to state otherwise, therefore, the assumption in the (short order) that the said MNAs are PTI candidates is with respect liable to be reviewed.”

Since the short order did not address the issues of whether seats could be left vacant or would have to be distributed amongst the political parties contesting for those seats and the “proportional representation system of political parties lists of candidates”, the review petition urged the SC to recall the judgement.