ECP suspends 77 lawmakers elected on reserved seats in light of SC verdict

F.P. Report

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday suspended the membership of 77 lawmakers in the light of Supreme Court’s order on reserved seats.

The Supreme Court had suspended the Peshawar High Court (PHC) and the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision to give the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) reserved seats to other parties last week.

The ruling PML-N will be the bigger loser as its 44 lawmakers lost their seats following the SC order.

The reserved seats of SIC were earlier distributed among the other parties including the PML-N, PPP, JUI-F, MQM-P and PML-Q across the country.

The order of Supreme Court was first implemented by Punjab Assembly Speaker Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan who suspended the membership of 27 MPAs last week.

The ruling alliance in Punjab lost 24 woman lawmakers and three minority MPAs in the light of the SC’s judgement.

The suspended MPAs included 23 from PML-N, two from PPP and one each from IPP and PML-Q.

On March 4 last, the ECP had accepted applications of the opposing parties and decided that the seats in the National Assembly and provincial assemblies would not remain vacant and would be allocated by a proportional representation process on the basis of seats won by political parties.

The development resulted in PTI-backed SIC losing a total of 77 reserved seats – 23 National Assembly seats (20 women and 3 minorities), 25 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly seats (21 women and 4 minorities), two Sindh Assembly seats (women) and 27 Punjab Assembly seats (24 women and 3 minority).

The Peshawar High Court had also rejected petitions filed by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) for the reserved seats of women and minorities.

The party had challenged the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) verdict of not allocating the reserved women and minority seats to the SIC.