ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top court on Monday suspended a verdict by the Peshawar High Court (PHC) that a party aligned with candidates backed by former premier Imran Khan was not eligible for reserved seats in the legislature, a blow for the country’s coalition government headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. 

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party couldn’t contest the Feb. 8 elections under its traditional electoral symbol, a cricket bat, which it was denied on technical grounds. The PTI subsequently struck an alliance with another party, the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), in a bid to secure reserved seats for women and minorities in parliament. 

Under Pakistan’s election rules, political parties are allotted reserved seats in proportion to the number of parliamentary seats they win in the election. This completes the National Assembly’s total strength of 336 seats.

The Election Commission had ruled in March that the SIC was not eligible for reserved seats, a decision the alliance had appealed in the PHC, which also rejected it. The SIC then approached the Supreme Court to appeal the high court’s decision. 

A three-member bench of the top court took up the SIC’s petition for hearing on Monday. 

“The Supreme Court has suspended the Election Commission’s order and the Peshawar High Court’s order,” PTI Chairman Gohar Khan, who is also Khan’s lawyer, told reporters outside the top court after it rejected the PHC verdict. “This is a vindication of our stance.”

He said the Supreme Court had also barred members of other political parties elected on reserved seats that should have been allotted to the SIC from casting their votes for or against any legislation.

The PTI leader said the SIC had been deprived of 67 reserved seats for women and 11 parliamentary seats for minorities. After losing 78 reserved seats, PM Sharif’s coalition government had lost its two-thirds majority, he added. 

Khan, who is in jail following a string of convictions, and his PTI say the party was stripped of its bat symbol as a ruse to undermine its popularity and keep it from winning a maximum number of seats in general elections. 

In February, an agreement between 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 the Feb. 8 elections produced a hung national assembly.

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

Candidates backed by Khan won 93 seats but did not have the numbers to form a government. He and his party have rejected the results of the elections, alleging widespread rigging.