Lahore:
The Lahore High Court directed the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to issue notifications to members for reserved seats in the Punjab Assembly.
Justice Shahid Waheed heard the petition of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) against non-issuance of notification of members on reserved seats of Provincial Assembly.
During the hearing, lawyer PTI Barrister Ali Zafar took the position that the Election Commission was bound to issue a notification on these seats after de-seating the deviant members but was not issuing a notification.
Barrister Ali Zafar further said that the list given by the political parties cannot be changed, we asked the Election Commission to issue a notification on it.
According to lawyer PTI, the Election Commission said that 20 seats are vacant, so the total seats of the parties have also changed. This position of the Commission is not in accordance with the law.
Advocate General Punjab said that notification on reserved seats is issued after general elections, now the position of political parties has changed due to 20 seats, I thought it was a matter of larger bench.
Later, the Lahore High Court annulled the decision of the Election Commission and directed the Commission to issue notification of reserved seats.
It may be recalled that last month, 25 deviant members of the Assembly, including five PTI members elected to reserved seats for women and minorities, were disqualified for voting for PML-N’s Hamza Shahbaz in the Punjab Chief Ministerial election. And on May 23, he was formally notified by the Election Commission of Pakistan.
The PTI had on May 28 filed a petition in the Lahore High Court seeking directions to the Election Commission to issue a declaration for the appointment of new MPAs on the vacant seats.
In this regard, the Lahore High Court had asked the Election Commission to give a decision on the matter till June 2.
In its ruling, the ECP said, “We have come to the conclusion that the system of proportional representation provided in the Constitution is mandatory to fill the vacancies reserved for women and non-Muslims, in the spirit of Article 106 of the Constitution.” In view of this, we consider it appropriate to postpone the process of filling up the vacant reserved seats till the results of the by-elections to the 20 general seats of the Punjab Provincial Assembly.
On June 3, PTI had filed an appeal in the Lahore High Court challenging the ECP’s decision.
