The federal government has voiced concerns over the delay in the issuance of the detailed verdict of the Supreme Court’s short order on the allocation of reserved seats to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), calling on the apex court to disclose the dissenting notes of two judges.
“The detailed verdict [of July 12 verdict] hasn’t been issued even after 15 days,” Federal Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said while talking to the media in Lahore on Sunday.
The minister’s remarks refer to the apex court’s last month’s ruling wherein it had declared the PTI eligible for reserved seats of women and minorities in the assemblies after overturning the decisions of the Peshawar High Court (PHC) and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
The ruling not only paved the way for the Imran Khan-founded party’s return to the parliament but also effectively deprived the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) led coalition government of its two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
Since the top court’s ruling, the ECP has notified 39 out of 80 Members of the National Assembly (MNAs) as PTI members along with 93 lawmakers in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh assemblies as “returned candidates” of the former ruling party.
However, the PML-N and its key ally the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) have filed review pleas on the full court’s 8-5 majority order.
In its review plea, the PML-N has questioned if reserved seats could be granted to a political party that had not submitted a party list within the prescribed time, whether a political party can be given reserved seats whose candidates have not even filed nomination papers within the time provided by the ECP and if independents could even join a political party which did not win a single general seat in parliament.
Meanwhile, the Bilawal Bhutto-led PPP has maintained that the PTI is not entitled to the reserved seats as it didn’t claim them in the first place.
Referring to the 29-page dissenting note written by Justices Amin-Ud-Din Khan and Naeem Akhtar Afghan, who were part of the full court bench, Tarar said that the issues raised in the said document should be duly discussed.
“It’s imperative that the points raised by the [two] judges are [duly] answered,” the minister said.
