PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court on Tuesday temporarily stopped Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly speaker from administering oath to 24 persons notified by Election Commission of Pakistan in March last year as MPAs-elect on seats reserved for women and non-Muslims.

A bench consisting of Justice Syed Arshad Ali and Justice Dr Khurshid Iqbal issued notices to Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), seeking its response to a petition filed by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-Parliamentarian (PTI-P) through its provincial parliamentary leader Arbab Mohammad Waseem, challenging the Mar 4, 2024, notifications of the commission of notifying MPAs-elect on the reserved seats.

The bench fixed July 3 for next hearing with the direction that till then oath should not be administered to the notified persons.

The petitioner apprehended that following Supreme Court’s constitutional bench judgement of June 27, declaring PTI not entitled to seats reserved for women and non-Muslims in National and provincial assemblies, the two impugned notifications had revived and oath could be administered to the notified MPAs- elect anytime.

The petitioner stated that having two MPAs in KP Assembly, it was entitled to be allocated three out of the total 26 seats reserved for women and one of the four for non-Muslims, but ECP had allocated only a single reserved seat of women to it.

The petitioner requested the court to declare the two impugned notifications of ECP of Mar 4, 2024, as illegal and not based proper calculation/allocation of reserved seats for women and non-Muslims in KP Assembly.

The petition sought directives of court for ECP to properly calculate and allocate seats reserved for women and non-Muslims to the party by increasing its number as per law.

The petitioner also sought interim relief, requesting the court to stop the KP Assembly speaker from administering oath to 24 of the MPAs-elect on reserved seats, who were notified in the impugned notifications, till final decision of the petition.

Advocate Sultan Mohammad Khan appeared for the petitioner and said that PTI-P had contested 2024 general elections and two of its candidates, Arbab Waseem and Mohammad Iqbal Wazir, were elected MPAs. He said that ECP issued two impugned notifications wherein 24 persons were notified as MPAs-elect on seats reserved for women and non-Muslims.

He stated that non-allocation of seats to a particular political party by ECP was challenged before the high court, which upheld the order of ECP on Mar 14, 2024.

He added that the said judgement was challenged before Supreme Court of Pakistan and recently on June 27 the constitutional bench upheld the high court’s verdict by setting aside earlier judgement of the apex court.

He argued that the effect of the judgements of SC and PHC was that the two impugned notifications of Mar 4, 2024, of ECP were now back in the field and the notified persons could be administered oath anytime.

The counsel contended that ECP had not properly calculated the number of reserved seats allocated to different parties as per Constitution of Pakistan and Elections Act, 2017, which provided for a system of proportional representation as per the number of general seats won by any parliamentary party.

When the bench inquired why the petitioner had not approached ECP instead of high court, the counsel stated that once the notifications were issued by the commission it couldn’t reconsider the same on its own.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2025