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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top court on Friday delivered a landmark verdict saying the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan was eligible for reserved seats in parliament, mounting pressure on the fragile ruling coalition of premier Shehbaz Sharif.

PTI candidates contested the Feb. 8 general elections as independents after the party was barred from the polls and though these independents won the most seats, 93, the election commission ruled they would not get their share of 70 seats reserved for women and minorities since they are meant for political parties only. The seats were then allotted to other parties, mostly from those in Sharif’s ruling coalition.

In Pakistan, parties are allocated 70 reserved seats — 60 for women, 10 for non-Muslims — in proportion to the number of seats won in general elections. This completes the National Assembly’s total 336 seats. A simple majority in Pakistan’s parliament is 169 out of 336 seats.

In March, both the ECP and Peshawar High Court in separate rulings said that the independents were not eligible for the reserved seats, dealing a blow to the embattled PTI’s governing prospects and proving to be a major setback for Khan, who has been in jail since last August. The verdicts were subsequently overruled by the Supreme Court, which has since last month been hearing a set of petitions on the issue.

On Friday, the Supreme Court set aside the Peshawar High Court verdict and said the ECP order declaring the PTI ineligible for reserved seats was “ultra vires of the constitution, without lawful authority and of no legal effect.”

“PTI shall be eligible for women and ministries reserved seats in parliament,” Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa said as he read the verdict in one of the petitions filed by the PTI-backed bloc, calling on the ECP to recalculate the number of reserved seats Khan’s party was entitled to.

PTI’s Syed Shibli Faraz, currently serving as the leader of the opposition in the Senate, said that this was a “historic” day in Pakistani politics.

“Heartiest congratulations firstly to the Pakistani public and their leader Imran Khan,” Faraz told reporters after the court ruling was announced.

Without the 70 reserved seats, the government stands to lose its two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, without which it cannot push through constitutional amendments.

The verdict also bolsters the political position of Khan’s supporters, whose rallying cry has been that the election commission and a pro-military caretaker government that oversaw the polls indulged in electoral fraud to deprive it of a victory. The ECP denies this.

“PTI WAS AND IS A PARTY”

All candidates from Khan’s PTI party were forced to contest the February polls as independents after the party was stripped of its election symbol of the cricket bat by the ECP on the technical grounds that it did not hold intra-party elections, a prerequisite for any party to take part in polls.

After the election, the PTI-backed candidates were forced to join Sunni Ittehad Council, or SIC, party to claim a share of 70 reserved seats as independents are not eligible for the extra seats.

“It is declared that lack of denial of an election symbol does not in any way affect the right of a political party to participate in an election,” said the court order in one of the PTI petitions, which was supported by eight judges and opposed by five of the 13-member full court bench. “The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, PTI, was and is a party.”

The order said that elected members of the PTI could not be declared independents or candidates of the SIC and gave the PTI 15 days to submit its list of candidates entitled for reserved seats to the election commission.

Addressing a press conference, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said the government would wait for the detailed judgment to decide on its course of action, but pointed out that the petitions had been filed by the SIC but “relief” had been given by the court to the PTI, which did not file the pleas.

“A lot of confusion and questions has been born from this judgment,” he told reporters. “A situation has been created in which there is little clarity.”

In a statement sent to media, the PTI said that 86 PTI-backed returned candidates in the National Assembly and 107 in the Punjab Assembly, 91 in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly and 9 in the Sindh Assembly “are entitled to be counted for the purpose of election to the reserved seats on the basis of proportional representation.” It is expected that the PTI could get up to 23 reserved seats after Friday’s judgment.

PM Sharif formed a weak coalition with other parties after the Feb. 8 general elections produced a hung parliament.

Sharif’s PML-N party’s 79 and the PPP’s 54 seats together made a simple majority in parliament to form a government at the center and also roped in smaller parties in the coalition.