The Lahore High Court (LHC) accepted the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) plea on Monday as it ordered the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to notify the concerned members on Punjab Assembly’s reserved seats.
PTI members had filed different petitions challenging the ECP’s decision to defer issuing notifications to the party’s members regarding the five reserved seats in the assembly. These seats had fallen vacant following ECP’s decision to de-seat dissident lawmakers.
The plaintiffs’ counsels implored that the commission had failed to notify MPAs since the lawmakers’ de-seating even though the ECP was legally bound to do so.
The ECP’s legal team argued that they had not refused to notify the Punjab lawmakers, but rather would notify them after by-polls.
PTI’s lawyers Barrister Ali Zafar and Azhar Siddique, however, contradicted the defendant’s arguments and said that the election watchdog issues notifications on women and minority’s reserved seats following the lists provided by the political parties relying on the seats they won in general elections. The lists provided by the political parties could not be changed, they argued.
It is pertinent to mention that at least 25 of PTI’s dissident lawmakers, including five elected on seats reserved for women and minorities, had been de-seated for voting in favour of PML-N’s Hamza Shahbaz Sharif contesting for the chief minister’s slot. The said PTI lawmakers had not voted for PTI-backed candidate Chaudhry Pervez Elahi. They were officially de-notified by the ECP on May 23.
The petitioners, including PTI’s opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly Mohammad Sibtain Khan, implored in their petitions that according to Article 104 (5) of the Election Act, 2017, “Where a seat reserved for women or non-Muslims in an Assembly falls vacant as a result of death, resignation or disqualification of a member, it shall be filled in by the next person in order of precedence from the party’s list of candidates submitted to the Commission.”
According to the PTI priority list, Batool Janjua, Saira Raza and Fouzia Abbas were next in line for women’s seats while Habkook Gill and Samuel Yaqoob were nominated for minority seats.
They contended to the court that respondents – Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja and Provincial Election Commission, Punjab – were not willing to notify them as members.
The women and minority members who were on the priority list had repeatedly contacted the respondents and submitted their declarations as per the election rules but the respondents were reluctant to get the documents and were not notifying them.
They prayed the court that direction is passed to ECP and Provincial Election Commission to notify the five new MPAs on reserved seats.
LHC’s Justice Shahid Waheed heard the arguments on all sides and announced the decision directing the election commission to issue notifications to the concerned MPAs.