Supreme Court
Three judges will hear cases under the direction of the Chief Justice.
Justices Munib Akhtar and Ijaz ul Ahsan are also included.
Punjab elections were scheduled on May 14 by Punjab’s top court.
ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) case, which challenges the Supreme Court’s earlier decision on elections for the Punjab Assembly, will be heard by a three-member Supreme Court panel on Monday.
The case will be heard by the bench, which is led by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial and includes Justices Ijaz ul Ahsan and Munib Akhtar, a day after May 14, when the country’s highest court ordered elections to be conducted in the nation’s biggest province.
Following months of controversy surrounding the elections, the Supreme Court’s previous ruling on a case brought by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which was heard by the same three-member bench, was released.
In an effort to pressure the ruling coalition to call early elections, the PTI-led Punjab government disbanded the provincial parliament in January. But the administration has repeatedly said that this year’s elections will take place in October or November.
The PTI has protested the electoral authority’s decision to push out the Punjab elections to October. In a ruling dated April 4, the Supreme Court ruled that the ECP’s judgement was illegal, invalid from the start, and had no bearing on the law.
The federal government was instructed to release Rs21 billion for the elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and it also ordered the electoral authority to hold elections in Punjab on May 14. The money hasn’t yet been released by the government, though.
The ECP then requested that the Supreme Court revisit its April 4 directions from earlier in the month.
The chief election organising body said in a 14-page appeal that the supreme court should reconsider its judgement since the judiciary “doesn’t have the authority to give the date of elections.”
The ECP asserted, citing several legal precedents and justifications, “Such powers exist elsewhere under the Constitution but certainly do not lie in a Court of law.”
By setting a date, the electoral body claimed that the Supreme Court had ignored its constitutional authority and that the court’s intervention was therefore necessary to correct an error that had effectively altered the nation’s established constitutional jurisprudence.
