The Supreme Court resumed hearings on Monday regarding the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) petition challenging the denial of reserved seats for women and minorities in national and provincial assemblies. Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa leads a 13-member bench overseeing the proceedings. The bench includes Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Muneeb Akhtar, Yahya Afridi, Amin-ud-Din Khan, Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Ayesha A Malik, Athar Minallah, Syed Hassan Azhar Rizvi, Shahid Waheed, Irfan Saadat Khan, and Naeem Akhtar Afghan.
Having aligned with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) for the February 8 elections, the SIC encountered challenges after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) revoked PTI’s electoral symbol, a decision affirmed by the Supreme Court. Despite their alliance, the ECP withheld reserved seats from the SIC due to its failure to submit the required candidate list.
Read more: Ali Amin Gandapur Vows to Reclaim Reserved Seats
Consequently, the SIC appealed to the Peshawar High Court (PHC), which upheld the ECP’s decision. In April, SIC leader Sahibzada Hamid Raza and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly speaker approached the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the PHC ruling and secure 67 seats for women and 11 for minorities.
On May 6, a three-member Supreme Court bench led by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, with Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah, suspended the PHC decision and referred the case to a larger bench due to its constitutional significance.
In earlier sessions, the CJP remarked that issues might have been avoided had PTI conducted intra-party elections. Last week, the ECP submitted a response arguing that SIC does not meet the criteria for reserved seats as it excludes non-Muslims from its membership and failed to submit the candidate list by the January 24 deadline. Initially, PTI candidates sought PTI-Nazriati’s symbol but later withdrew, declared themselves independents, and subsequently joined SIC. This sequence of events led to the ECP’s decision, upheld by the PHC, to deny reserved seats to the SIC.
