As the Peshawar High Court resumed hearing the Sunni Ittehad Council’s plea pertaining to the allocation of reserved seats, PTI’s Barrister Ali Zafar, who is representing the SIC, said his client had expected that the ECP would rule in their favour.

At the outset of the hearing, Zafar informed the court that 86 independent candidates from National Assembly, 107 from Punjab Assembly, 90 from KP Assembly, 9 from Sindh Assembly and one from Balochistan Assembly had joined the SIC.

He contended that the SIC should have been allocated reserved seats “under Article 104’s section (c)” of the Elections Act. “We expected that we would get the reserved seats. The ECP was mandated to allot 78 seats to the SIC but it did not do so.”

Here, the court asked him if the case before it was pertaining to the entire country, to which Zafar replied that it was limited to the national and KP assemblies’ reserved seats.

The SIC counsel further said the reserved seats “belonging to the SIC were instead given to occupiers”, at which the court directed Zafar to not refer to them as such, noting that the seats were allotted by the ECP.