Judicial diatribe

The Constitutional Bench has opened a Pandora's Box of arguments by declaring that the July 12, 2024 reserved seats judgement was out of the ambit of the court's legal authority. The majority verdict had bestowed the right of reserved seats in the legislature to PTI on the premise of party's Independent candidates joining Sunni Tehrik on the floor of the house.

The detailed judgment on reversing the same was pronounced in a surprisingly harsh language, and went on to state that it had ignored the "will of people" and "command of the Constitution". The unanimously authored dictum further noted that the learned judges in the July 12 order "instead of taking legal and constitutional course" used the so-called "peculiar facts and circumstances of the General Election of 2024 to issue a series of declarations and directives" and, thus, had intervened in the domain of the legislature.

The 40-page detailed interpretation will go a long way in kick-starting a debate on the judicial course of action meted out to the beleaguered PTI, as the party was pushed to the wall in political sense, and denied due legal space by the courts of law. The jiff of relief from the July 12 verdict was also hampered as the electoral watchdog itself sat in judgment by deciding not to implement the decision, as the review petitions were pending from then on.

An interesting observation of the learned bench was that "elections to the reserved seats, no doubt indirect, and no doubt based on the principle of proportional representation, were no longer determined by the will and votes of the electorate; and the same were taken over by the court." It also noted in a categorical manner that the majority verdict of July 2024 ignored the "will of the people and the command of the Constitution" and the decision was in accordance with the "wishes of the leadership of PTI". This piece of edict seems far-fetched and the Constitutional Bench too has taken a deviation from its mandate of reviewing a judgment earnestly in good faith.