The Supreme Court Tuesday resumed hearing the Sunni Ittehad Council’s (SIC) petition challenging the Peshawar High Court’s (PHC) verdict on the allocation of reserved seats. The case is being heard by a 13-member full court SC bench led by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa. The bench also includes of Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Munib Akhtar, Yahya Afridi, Aminuddin Khan, Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Ayesha Malik, Athar Minallah, Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, Shahid Waheed, Irfan Saadat Khan and Naeem Akhtar Afghan. It is to be noted that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had deprived SIC of its reserved seats citing its failure to submit its list of candidates. The electoral body not only denied the reserved seats to SIC, it distributed them among other parties. The party had then approached the PHC on the said issue wherein the court upheld the electoral body’s decision. In April, SIC chief Sahibzada Hamid Raza along with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly speaker moved the SC seeking setting aside of the PHC verdict and the allocation of 67 women and 11 minority seats in the assemblies. On May 6, a three-member SC bench headed by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, and including Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar and Justice Athar Minallah, suspended the PHC verdict and referred the matter to the judges’ committee for the formation of a larger bench since the matter required constitutional interpretation.
Supreme Court resumes hearing SIC petition on reserved seats
