Sunni Ittehad Council petitions ECP for reserved seats

ISLAMABAD: The Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) has requested the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to allocate reserved seats for women and minorities to the party.

The move comes after the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-backed independent candidates, who won the general election, announced to join the Sunni Ittehad Council.

According to sources, the party certificates of the PTI-backed members who have joined the SIC have also been submitted to the ECP.

The sources said that 50 PTI-backed independent members of the National Assembly have submitted their party certificates.

Talking to the media outside the ECP, SIC Chairman Sahibzada Hamid Raza said that the alliance with PTI was not new, but had been going on for six years.

He said that the people had given their mandate and they would not let it be insulted. He said that they were collecting the affidavits of the independent members who were notified of their success on February 16.

Sahibzada Hamid Raza said that they were looking into the matter of reserved seats for women and that they would collect the affidavits of the winning members as the notifications were issued.

Earlier, at a press conference in Islamabad, PTI leader Barrister Gohar claimed that the PTI has won 180 seats in the National Assembly. He said that their independent candidates had contested the elections with the backing of the PTI. He said that the PTI had issued tickets to their candidates and supported the independent candidates who won.

He announced that after a notification is issued, independent candidates are supposed to join a party within three days. He said that the PTI-backed independent members-elect of the national and provincial assemblies would join the SIC.

He said that the decision to join the SIC was made by consensus and that they would demand the ECP to allocate reserved seats according to the law.

It may be noted that in the general election, the PTI-backed independent candidates won 92 seats in the National Assembly, 116 in the Punjab Assembly, 80 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 11 in Sindh.