The Supreme Court’s Constitutional Bench (CB) has issued detailed reasons in the reserved seats review, and it’s easily among the most unwittingly comical decisions in our legal history. This distinction is notable in itself, given that Justice Qazi Faez Isa is no longer authoring judgments.

To recap, Justice Isa had stripped the country’s largest party, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), of its symbol right before the polls in 2024; the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) then made sure no symbol meant no party, and wrongly forced the PTI nominees to contest as independents.

When the independents ended up winning in historic numbers anyway, it followed that they’d be entitled to the most reserved seats. But the rules say that a lack of symbol precludes parties from such seats — the 80 independents in the assembly were thus forced to park themselves under the canopy of Sunni Ittehad Council (symbol: horse) to claim their share.

Still unimpressed, the ECP not only continued freezing out the PTI, it even doled out their haul of reserves to the loser parties. It took a 13-member judgment of the Supreme Court to put things right, and — in Sunni Ittehad vs Election Commission — hold that the 80 independents were either already PTI or could write in that they were PTI, and thus bag their rightful seats.

No sooner had democracy breathed a rare sigh of relief than the........

© Dawn Prism