ECP to hear SIC reserved seats case today

Five-member bench led by the CEC to conduct open hearing

ISLAMABAD:

The country’s election oversight authority is scheduled to conduct an open hearing today, Tuesday, to settle the matter of allocating reserved seats to the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) in the national and provincial legislatures.

According to a cause-list issued on Monday, a five-member ECP bench led by Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan Raja will hold the hearing at the commission’s Islamabad office at 10 am.

The ECP has issued notices to both the SIC chief and other respondents, including MQM’s Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Maulvi Iqbal Haider, and Mahmood Ahmed Khan, for the preliminary hearing.

The SIC, a relatively unknown political entity, emerged as a major party in the National Assembly and the provincial legislature of Punjab after independent candidates affiliated with the PTI joined it last week.

This development occurred as a result of an agreement between the SIC and the former ruling party, whose candidates had to contest the February 8 general elections as independents due to the ECP’s decision to deprive it of its election symbol in December last year.

According to the Constitution, independent candidates must join a political party three days after general elections.

The ECP has already allotted reserved seats to all other parties. It has allocated 19 women’s seats and four minority seats to the PML-N, 12 women’s seats and two minority seats to the PPPP, and four women’s seats and one minority seat to the MQM-P. Other parties—the JUI-F, the PML-Q, and the IPP—have each received one seat.

The ECP has so far notified the allocation of a total of 38 reserved seats for women and seven for minorities. It has held back its decision on the remaining 22 women’s seats and three minorities.

According to some experts, whether the ECP decides to allocate the reserved seats to the SIC or not, the matter will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court.

The matter of allocating seats to the SIC has also created another crisis as President Dr Arif Alvi declined on Monday to sign a summary moved by the caretaker government to summon the inaugural session of the National Assembly.