SC slams ECP over failure in holding free and fair elections on Feb 8

Supreme Court of Pakistan on Monday slammed the Election Commission of Pakistan over its alleged failure to hold free and fair elections on February 8 and declared its March 1 decision over the reserve seats case as contrary to the Constitution of Pakistan.

The verdict in the case pertaining to the allocation of reserve seats was written by Justice Mansoor Khan. The 70-pages-long ruling was issued with an 8-5 majority after 71-day long proceedings.

A thirteen-member larger bench expressed wonder on the decision of the electoral body and said the commission was combating the case of an opponent party.

The verdict said that the ECP is responsible for conducting free and fair elections, but the court has to interfere “when election authorities engage in actions such as unlawfully denying the recognition of a major political party and treating its nominated candidates as independents."

"They did not only compromise the rights of these candidates but also significantly infringe upon the rights of the electorate and corrode their own institutional legitimacy.”

The bench interpreted Rule 94, which said that a party that has an election symbol will be considered to be a political party, but Rule 94 is inverse to Article 51(6) of the constitution of Pakistan. It is also contradictory to section 106 of the Election Act.

SC declared averting a political party from allocation of reserve seats based on election symbols as a punishment, “no other constitutional or statutory right of the political party can be denied on the basis of the non-allocation of an election symbol under this provision.”

PTI’s nominated candidates were wrongly shown independent candidates in the list of contesting candidates (Form 33) by the returning officers and were also wrongly notified as independent returned candidates in the Section-98 notification by the Commission, the judgment read.

“Unfortunately, the circumstances of the present case indicate that the Commission has failed to fulfil this role in the General Elections of 2024,” the order added.