Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled on Friday that jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan's party was eligible for over 20 extra reserved seats in parliament, ramping up pressure on the country's weak coalition government.
Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party candidates contested the Feb. 8 election as independents after it was barred from the polls. They won the most seats but the election commission said independents were ineligible for the grant of 70 reserved seats, meant for political parties only.
The commission had ordered the reserved seats instead to be distributed among other parties, mostly to those in the ruling coalition.
"As a political party, the PTI is entitled to its reserved seats," said Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa while reading out the order, which was supported by eight judges and opposed by five of the 13-member full court bench.
The granting of 23 reserved seats does not affect the parliamentary majority of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's coalition government, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told reporters after the decision.
The ruling coalition still has well over 200 members of the 336-member lower house of parliament. Khan's party strength stood at 84 before the decision, and is expected to rise to over 100.
Under Pakistan's election rules, parties are allocated 70 reserved seats - 60 for women, 10 for non-Muslims - in proportion to the number of seats they win. This completes the National Assembly's total strength of 336 seats.
The decision does however bolster the political position of Khan's supporters, whose rallying cry has been that the election commission and a pro-military caretaker government that oversaw the polls indulged in electoral fraud to deprive it of a victory.
The commission and military deny the charges, but questions have been raised in the West about the transparency of the polls.
"This is what we have been saying, that we were robbed of our right," said PTI chairman Gohar Khan, adding that the party which some people had wished to eliminate has been revived.
The US House of Representatives, as well as European countries, have called on Islamabad to open a probe into the allegations - a move that Pakistan has thus far rejected.
Khan was ousted from power in 2022 after he fell out with the country's powerful military generals. The military denies it interferes in politics.
The judgment effectively denies a two-third majority to the ruling coalition that it was hoping for, said Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, the president of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency think tank.
"It will boost the morale of PTI workers and they may be in a better position to launch a movement if the party so decides," he said. (Reporting by Islamabad bureau; Writing by Asif Shahzad and Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)