• Two judges The Bank of Banks stay in the order of permanence since PTI-P withdraws its plea after the ECP official tells the court of similar petition before IHC
• The ANP request for the proportional allocation of seats referred to the Electoral Commission for additional action
Peshawar: The Superior Court of Peshawar (PHC) annulled on Thursday its stay order in the MPA oath in seating reserved for women and non -Muslims, a movement that would increase the strength of opposition parties in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly.
The Court had granted an order of suspension in the request of the parliamentarians of Pakistan Tehreek-I-Insaf (PTI-P), formed by the former PTI leader and Prime Minister of KP, Pervez Khattak, and prevented the speaker from managing the oath to the mpaselects in reserved seats.
On Thursday, a PHC bank of two members, which includes Judges Syed Arshad Ali and Dr. Khurshid Iqbal, resumed the hearing on the PTI-P application and a similar plea presented by ANP.
The petitioners had sought directives for the Electoral Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to recalculate their part of seats reserved in proportion to their general seats in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly.
They had asked the Court to set aside two notifications issued by the ECP on March 4, 2024, notifying the names of candidates returned from different political parties in seats reserved for women and non -Muslims.
Both PTI-P and ANP said that a seat of each of the total 26 seats reserved for women were assigned, while they were not assigned a single seat against the four seats reserved for non-Muslims.
They claimed that they were entitled to three seats for women and a seat for non -Muslims.
The special secretary of the ECP, Mohammad Arshad, informed the bank that PTI-P had previously submitted a request similar to the commission, but was rejected.
He affirmed that the party challenged the problem before the Superior Court of Islamabad, where the matter was still pending.
The Bank questioned the PTI-P lawyer on how the statement could be presented in the PHC when the problem had already been challenged in the Superior Court of Islamabad.
The lawyer Sultan Mohammad Khan declared that the petition was presented by the parliamentary leader of PTI-P, Arbab Mohammad Waseem, who did not know the pending litigation in the IHC.
After a short break in the process, lawyer Khan informed the court that his client wanted to withdraw the petition.
Subsequently, the Bank dismissed the petition and withdrew its suspension order granted on July 1.
ANP request
Meanwhile, lawyer Babar Khan Yousafzai, who appeared on behalf of ANP, said the party has also challenged the allocation of reserved seats.
He said that the party has two general seats in the KP Assembly and under the system of proportional representation of the allocation of reserved seats, was entitled to three seats reserved for women and one for non -Muslims.
The special secretary of the ECP said that the case of ANP was “different”, since he won a single seat in the general elections of February 8, 2024 and then another in a partial election.
He said that the reserved seats were assigned on the basis of the seats won by a political party in the general elections.
The ECP official added that if the seats were assigned on the basis of the results of the partial elections, it would result in complications and interrupt the existing process. The bank referred to the ANP plea to the ECP with the directives to decide the matter within 10 days.
Last year, the ECP had assigned 10 seats reserved for women to Jui-F, eight to PML-N, six to PPP and one to ANP and PTIP.
Similarly, two seats reserved for non-Muslims were assigned to Jui-F and one to PML-N and PPPP.
The number of seats held by opposition parties in the KP Assembly from 27 to 52 after the decision of the Constitutional Bank to make the PTI not eligible for seats reserved in national and provincial assemblies is expected.
The sentence, issued last month, restored several notifications of March 2024 of the ECP that declared 25 candidates of opposition parties chosen for seats reserved in the Provincial Assembly.
Currently, the house of 120 people has 93 MPA backed by PTI, which were chosen as independent, while the 25 reserved seats were vacancies.
On Wednesday, the ECP assigned stars reserved in the Punjab and Sindh assemblies, which increases the counts of all the main political parties, except the PTI.
Posted in Dawn, July 4, 2025
