Party that wins in general election deserves reserved seats, AGP tells PHC

Attorney General for Pakistan Mansoor Usman Awan Wdnesday said a political party could get reserved seats only if it won a general one.

His comments came as the Peshawar High Court resumed hearing the Sunni Ittehad Council’s petition pertaining to the allocation of reserved seats.

The bench — led by Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim and including Justices Ijaz Anwar, S.M. Attique Shah, Shakeel Ahmed and Syed Arshad Ali — resumed hearing the case.

Qazi Anwar appeared as the counsel for the SIC while Farooq H. Naek was the lawyer for the PPP — a respondent in the case. PPP leaders Faisal Karim Kundi and Nayyer Bukhari also reached the PHC while Azam Swati appeared from the PTI’s side.

The PHC initially rejected Anwar’s request to adjourn the hearing till tomorrow. After the PPP and ECP counsels as well as the AGP had presented their arguments, the court sought the same from the SIC lawyer.

However, Anwar said he could present his arguments if given time till tomorrow, at which the court adjourned the hearing till 9am on Thursday (tomorrow).

At the outset of the hearing, Anwar began presenting his arguments. He recalled that the PTI-backed independent candidates joined the SIC within three days of their winning notification as per the law.

Justice Ibrahim then asked if any candidate of the SIC had won the election, at which Justice Ali noted that the SIC chief had contested the Feb 8 polls as an independent candidate. Anwar informed the court, “Indeed, none of their candidates won.”

The court asked if the PTI-backed independents had submitted an application before the ECP on February 21 seeking to join the SIC, to which SIC lawyer Qazi Anwar replied in the affirmative, adding that “most of the candidates had won the election as independents”.

“They joined the SIC as per the ECP’s instructions,” Anwar asserted.

The court then asked when the list of candidates for the reserved seats was submitted to the ECP, noting: “If reserved seats are left vacant, then women and minorities would not have representation in the Parliament.”

The SIC lawyer replied that the application had been filed by PTI’s Ali Zafar and sought more time to prepare his arguments. At this, the court noted that neither was a plea filed seeking adjournment of the hearing nor was there any report of it. The court observed that only one larger-bench hearing was scheduled for today, adding that it would be an “injustice to the people”.

Anwar again requested that the court adjourn the hearing till tomorrow. However, the PHC refused to do so: “No, it cannot happen that the case be heard tomorrow.”

Upon Anwar seeking adjournment of the hearing till tomorrow, the court observed that the larger bench could not take up cases every day and rejected the counsel’s plea.

“He (Anwar) has not submitted any application. He is a senior counsel; he should not have done so. We have few judges and hear cases for five to six hours each day. The court also has to hear the cases of poor petitioners,” it noted.

Here, PPP counsel Farooq H. Naek informed the court that elections on a few Senate seats were scheduled for tomorrow. The court asked him if his client had “gotten more seats than its share”, to which the lawyer replied, “The Sunni Ittehad Council does not have a right to the reserved seats.”

In his arguments, the AGP said the representation of “mixed members”, including women and minorities, in the assemblies was law.

“The petitioner party did not take part in the general elections,” he stated.

Here, the court observed that the “method for a list of reserved seats was not clear in the law” and asked if the SIC was being considered a political party. To this, AGP Awan replied that it was yet to be reviewed whether the SIC was a political party or not under the “various sections of the ECP”.

“According to the law, if a political party that took part in the general elections or won a seat, then they would be allocated reserved seats,” the AGP told the court. “When a political party wins and then independent candidates join it, only then will it gain the benefit of reserved seats.”

After the PPP and ECP counsels as well as the AGP had presented their arguments, the court sought the same from the SIC lawyer.

The SIC — joined by PTI-backed independents who won the elections sans their electoral symbol — has challenged the Election Commission of Pakistan’s decision to reject the party allocation of reserved women and minority seats.

In a 4-1 verdict 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 commission had also decided to distribute the seats among other parliamentary parties, with the PML-N and the PPP becoming major beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the verdict was rejected by the PTI as unconstitutional.

On March 6, a two-member bench of the PHC had barred the oath-taking of lawmakers allotted the reserved seats. It issued a pre-admission to the ECP and all the respondents in the case, listing six questions that needed to be determined.

The next day, a five-member larger bench extended the bar until March 13 (today).