PTI seeks July 12 order implementation

The PTI has approached the Supreme Court for implementation of its July 12 brief order in reserved seats case while also urging the top court to set aside the Election Commission of Pakistan's (ECP) request seeking clarification of the verdict.

The miscellaneous application filed on behalf of the PTI by Advocate Uzair Bhandari states that the ECP's claim that it is facing difficulties in implementing the decision is incorrect.

The PTI alleges that the ECP's application is an attempt to delay the implementation of the court's decision and that it did not file the miscellaneous application in good faith. It claims that the ECP is creating obstacles in the allocation of reserved seats.

The application asserts that PTI has a legal constitutional structure in place, according to which the party held intra-party elections on March 3, and the details were submitted to the ECP.

In these elections, Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and Omar Ayub were respectively elected as chairman and general secretary of the party. The chairman and the secretary signed and approved the party affiliation of the members, and the ECP is obliged to complete the proceedings based on these affiliation certificates.

The PTI has requested the SC to order the poll oversight authority to approve the certificates of affiliation submitted by for PTI backed independent members.

Eight judges of a 13-member full-court on July 12 accepted an appeal filed by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), a party comprising PTI-backed lawmakers, against a Peshawar High Court (PHC) order that upheld an ECP decision not to grant the SIC reserved seats for women and minorities in legislatures.

The brief majority order not only resurrected the PTI which could not directly participate in the February 8 general elections after stripping of its election symbol but also paved the way for its emergence as the largest party in the National Assembly by getting reserved seats.

The majority judges accepted 39 out of the 80 SIC lawmakers as the PTI members as they had submitted their party affiliation certificates to the ECP ahead of the general election. They also allowed the remaining 41 lawmakers to join the PTI within 15 days on submission of affiliation certificates.