Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has challenged the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) verdict on the reserved seats of the Punjab Assembly (PA) in the Islamabad High Court (IHC), SAMAA TV reported Tuesday.
The election body, in its ruling, had stated that the allocation of reserved seats, three women and two minorities, would be notified after the conclusion of the by-election for 20 vacant PA seats.
Asad Umar, PTI’s General Secretary, filed the petition terming the ruling “against the law”.
Addressing the media outside IHC, Asad demanded restoration of the reserved seats through notification at the earliest.
“The law say that the next candidate is notified as soon as the seat falls vacant and there is no room for holding the notification back till the by-elections,” he maintained.
PTI, he said, will have the two minorities seats even if it loses on the 20 seats.
“The ECP issued a verdict to de-notify 25 dissidents of PTI,” the petition stated. “Uzma Kardar, Sajid Yousuf and Aisha Nawaz were also de-notified under the verdict.” The plea seeks nullification of ECP’s verdict issued on June 2.
The former planning and development minister went on to say that the notification was supposed to be issued for the reserved seats as per the party’s priority list but the election body stopped the notification till the by-election.
On June 2, ECP’s five-member bench reserved the verdict on the directions of the Lahore High Court, prompting PTI to notify new MPAs on reserved seats in the assembly.
The seats fell vacant after PTI’s dissident members who had voted for PML-N’s Hamza Shahbaz against their party’s line during the Punjab chief minister’s election last month.
