ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani Supreme Court on Wednesday disposed of a petition seeking the annulment of February 8 general elections, a day after two major political parties said they had reached a formal agreement to form a coalition government.

The announcement of government formation by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of three-time Premier Nawaz Sharif ended days of uncertainty and negotiations after elections produced a hung national assembly.

“Supreme Court has disposed of a petition seeking the annulment of February 8 general elections,” state-run Radio Pakistan reported. “A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa also imposed a fine of five hundred thousand rupees on the petitioner over his failure to appear before the court.”

The vote was marred by a mobile Internet shutdown on election day and unusually delayed results, leading to accusations that it was rigged and drawing concern from rights groups and foreign governments. Several political parties and candidates have held for protests against the results.

Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar rejected the accusations and said this week there was no manipulation of results and no pressure on the election commission to deliver a particular result. He said Pakistan would not investigate allegations of election irregularities just because some foreign capitals had sought a probe and had its own laws to deal with any challenges.

Elections saw the PML-N emerging as the largest party with 79 seats and PPP second with 54. They, along with four other smaller parties, have a comfortable majority in the legislature of 264 seats.

Independent candidates backed by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan formed the largest group of 93 members of a total of 264 seats for which results were declared. However, Khan cannot become prime minister from jail and his grouping cannot form a government as they nominally ran as independents as his party was barred from standing.

On Monday Khan’s PTI party said its independent candidates would join the minority Sunni Ittehad Council Political Party to form a government.

The interim chief, Barrister Gohar Khan, said at a news briefing the decision to join the minority party was so that the Tehreek-e-Insaf could access reserved seats in the national assembly.

Parties are allocated 70 reserved seats — 60 for women, 10 for non-Muslims — in proportion to the number of seats won. This completes the National Assembly’s total 336 seats. Independents are not eligible for reserved seats.