Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf will emerge as the largest party in Parliament with 109 seats after the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the party is eligible for allocation of seats reserved for women and minorities, according to a media report.
In a major legal victory for 71-year-old Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, a 13-member full bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa reversed the Peshawar High Court decision which had upheld the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) move to deny the party a share in reserved seats in the National Assembly and provincial assemblies.
The bench declared the decision of the apex election body as “void”, terming it “against the Constitution of Pakistan”.
The PTI will emerge as the largest party in the National Assembly as its tally is likely to increase from 86 to 109 after it wins the 23 reserved seats, Geo News reported.
The report said that the strength of the opposition alliance in the National Assembly will also increase to 120. Currently, the joint opposition, including PTI, has 97 members.
Khan’s party has 86 members in the lower house, of which 84 are with the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) and two independents – party leader Barrister Gauhar Ali Khan and Umar Ayub Khan.
With the PTI having majority seats in the lower house, the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will remain on a simple majority with a strength of 209 members. The PML-N has a total of 108 members.
The much-awaited decision, the Supreme Court’s verdict is being seen as a major blow to Prime Minister Sharif’s ruling coalition as it will increase pressure on the National Assembly by changing its composition and paving the way for the PTI’s return to Parliament.
“Withdrawal of election symbol cannot disqualify a political party from contesting an election,” the court said, referring to the Election Commission’s denial of permission to PTI to use cricket bat as its election symbol.
“PTI was and is a political party,” the bench ruled. Cricketer-turned-politician Khan had founded the PTI in 1996.
The dispute regarding reserved seats was related to the ECP’s rejection of the SIC’s plea to give it its share in the 70 reserved seats in the National Assembly and 156 reserved seats in the four provincial assemblies.
The PTI party could not contest the February 8 elections as the ECP rejected its intra-party elections and deprived it of its coveted ‘bat’ election symbol to contest the elections as a party.
Therefore, she was not eligible to claim the seats reserved for women and minorities given to the winning parties on the basis of proportional representation.
Hence its candidates, who won independently but with PTI’s support, were asked by the party leadership to join the SIC to form a parliamentary party to claim the reserved seats.
The inclusion of the PTI MPs brought to prominence the SIC, which was otherwise a dormant entity.
The final decision of the Supreme Court in this case will not bring any change in the current power structure, but the change in the overall numbers in the assemblies can have an impact on law making in the country.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
