ECP: The SC’s order on reserved seats should be followed in full.

The Supreme Court’s decision on the distribution of reserved seats to political parties will be followed in letter and spirit, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced on Tuesday.

The Election Commission will act in accordance with the directives given to the electoral body by the highest court, according to sources within the organization. They claimed further that there was a pending matter pertaining to the extra seats.

Regarding Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Senate elections, they claimed a decision had not yet been made. Additionally, the sources stated that KP province Senate elections would only be feasible once the matter pertaining to reserved seats was resolved.

The Sunni Ittehad Council’s appeal was accepted for consideration by the Supreme Court on Monday, but the PHC and the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision to reserve seats for the SIC and award them to other parties was stayed.

The mandate granted by the people should be properly represented in parliament, Judge Mansoor Ali Shah said as the proceedings got back underway. Allow me to explain what the Election Commission has really done, said the ECP’s legal representative. We only dispersed the reserved seats once. No new distribution of them was made.

The court, Justice Shah said, was more interested in following the Constitution than in what the Election Commission had done. Giving other parties more seats isn’t it against the idea of proportionality, Justice Shah questioned. According to Justice Athar Minallah, seats were unfairly awarded to other parties. Even after losing the electoral symbol, a party could still run for office, according to his observation.