A full bench of the Supreme Court resumed the hearing on Monday regarding the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) plea against the denial of reserved assembly seats for women and minorities. The bench includes Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Munib Akhtar, Yahya Afridi, Aminuddin Khan, Mandokhail, Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Ayesha Malik, Athar Minallah, Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, Shahid Waheed, Irfan Saadat Khan, and Naeem Akhtar Afghan.
Previously, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) argued that the SIC’s conditions under Article 3 of the Constitution violated Articles 17, 20, and 25 of the 1973 Constitution, disqualifying it from reserved seats for women and non-Muslims. The ECP’s reply to the Supreme Court emphasized that the Constitution and the Elections Act do not support leaving these reserved seats vacant.
The SIC’s appeal follows a controversial ECP decision in March, which allocated 21 out of 25 SIC reserved seats to the ruling coalition, leading to public backlash. The ruling coalition currently holds 224 seats in the National Assembly (NA), giving it a two-thirds majority in the 336-seat body. The Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) received 16 of the SIC’s reserved seats, and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) got five. Reallocating these seats to SIC would reduce the ruling coalition’s strength to 203 seats, removing its two-thirds majority.
In March, a five-member bench led by Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja rejected SIC’s petition for reserved seats with a 4-1 majority, declaring SIC ineligible for such seats.
