The Supreme Court has constituted a larger bench to hear the case concerning the allocation of reserved seats for the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC). A 13-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa, will conduct the proceedings on June 3. Except for the ailing Justice Musarrat Hilali, all other apex court judges will be part of the bench. Earlier in May, the apex court had suspended the Election Commission of Pakistan's (ECP) decision to allocate SIC's reserved seats to other parties. Justice Mansoor Ali Shah had, during the proceedings, remarked that the mandate given by the people should be properly represented in parliament.  The court had sent the matter of reserved seats to the Judges Committee to decide whether the case would be heard by the same bench or a larger bench would be constituted.

On March 4, the Election Commission of Pakistan had accepted applications of the opposing parties and decided that the seats in the National Assembly and provincial assemblies would not remain vacant and would be allocated by a proportional representation process on the basis of seats won by political parties. The development resulted in PTI-backed SIC losing a total of 77 reserved seats - 23 National Assembly seats (20 women and 3 minorities), 25 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly seats (21 women and 4 minorities), two Sindh Assembly seats (women) and 27 Punjab Assembly seats (24 women and 3 minority). The Peshawar High Court had also rejected the petitions filed by the Sunni Ittehad Council for the reserved seats of women and minorities. The party had challenged the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) verdict of not allocating the reserved women and minority seats to the SIC.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan