PTI members decry denial of reserved seats

PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidates who had been nominated by the party but denied the reserved seats by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) said the election watchdog decision was an injustice to KP.

Talking to the media on the promises of the Peshawar High Court (PHC), Wazirzada, Shahida Hameed and others resented the ECP decision of not allocating the reserved seats for women and minorities to the independently elected members of the parliament who had later joined the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC).

Wazirzada, who was a cabinet member in the last PTI provincial government and hails from the Kalash minority community of Chitral, said the election for the president and Senate should be postponed till the resolution of the issue of the reserved seats.

He said that the PTI had a right to the seats reserved for women and minorities.“The independently elected members of the parliament have joined the SIC but they have not been allotted the reserved seats. Where is written in the Constitution that a party which has not won seats [in the general elections] should be allocated reserved seats?” he asked.

Wazirzada said they would stage a sit-in and observe a hunger strike to get this right to reserved seats. He asked the chief election commissioner to resign on moral grounds. PTI leader Shahida Hameed said that denying reserved seats to them in KP was an injustice as it was their constitutional and legal right. “The representation of women in KP would be next to nil without that,” she argued.