PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday directed the federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and Election Commission of Pakistan to respond to a transgender person’s plea for the allocation of special seats in the national and provincial assemblies for her community.

Justice Wiqar Ahmad Khan of a single-member benchput the governments and ECP on notice for the response after preliminary hearing into the petition of Sobia Khan, a resident of Peshawar, and fixed Jan 10 for the next hearing.

The petitioner, whose name on her CNIC is Mohammad Bilal, insisted that when the high court would order the fixing of “quota” in assemblies for transgender persons, her nomination papers recently filed for election to a general seat in Peshawar’s PK-81 constituency should be considered for those reserved seats.

She made the chief election commissioner, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial election commissioner, returning officer for the PK-81 constituency, the federal government through the attorney general for Pakistan and the KP government through its advocate general as respondents to the petition.

Fixes hearing for Jan 10

The petitioner also sought an interim relief in the form of orders for the respondents, including the chief election commissioner, to accept her nomination papers for assembly seats to be reserved for transgender persons and not general seats.

Lawyers Sahibzada Riazatul Haq and Batool Rafaqat appeared for the petitioner and said their client was born as a transgender person but as there was no separate category for transgender persons in computerised national identity cards, her father got his CNIC made as a man.

They added that the petitioner was a well- educated person with a graduate degree and worked as a social activist, especially campaigning for the welfare of the transgender community.

Mr Haq said that the petitioner also worked for an online news agency as a journalist and hosted programmes at three FM radio channels and was the first transgender member of a dispute resolution council in the province.

The petitioner said that she had submitted nomination papers to contest general elections in the PK-81 constituency as an independent candidate eyeing a “reserved seat.”

She claimed that when she approached the relevant returning officer for receiving nomination papers, the latter told her that her nomination papers won’t be accepted for that seat as no ‘quota’ for transgender persons had so far been fixed by the Election Commission of Pakistan.

The petitioner contended that when a transgender person had the right to participate in elections as a voter, why the assemblies didn’t have seats reserved for the community.

He wondered as the national and provincial assemblies had seats reserved for religious minorities and women, why the legislature didn’t have such representation for the transgender community.

The petitioner argued that for safeguarding the rights of transgender persons in the country, it was necessary that transgender persons should have representation in all assemblies and therefore, the court should order the government and ECP to create special seats for them in legislative bodies.

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2024