Pakistan's Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Imran Khan's party was eligible for more than 20 seats reserved for women and minorities in Parliament, in a major legal victory for the jailed former prime minister, who demanded the resignation of the election commission chief.

Candidates backed by Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, who had contested and won the February 8 elections as independents after their party was stripped of its election symbol, had joined the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), a political alliance of Islamic political and Barelvi religious parties in Pakistan, to form a coalition of convenience.

The SIC had filed a plea challenging the Peshawar High Court (PHC) decision upholding the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) move to deny its share in reserved seats in the assemblies.

A 13-member full bench headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa heard the case. The ruling in the keenly awaited case is viewed as a major setback to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s ruling coalition though there is no immediate threat to the federal government.

Chief Justice Isa had announced after the proceedings on Tuesday that the panel decided to reserve the verdict for mutual consultation, which it announced on Friday.

A majority of eight judges ruled in favour of SIC by overturning the orders of the top election body and the judgment of the Peshawar High Court. The judgment was announced by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah.

“The order of the Election Commission of Pakistan, dated 1st of March 2024, is declared to be to ultra vires to (beyond the powers of) the Constitution, without lawful authority and of no legal effect,” according to the verdict.

“The notifications of various dates, whereby the persons respectively mentioned therein, being the persons identified in the commission’s notification, dated 13th of May, 2024, have been declared to be returned candidates for reserved seats for women and minorities in the national and provincial assemblies, are declared to be ultra vires to the Constitution, without lawful authority and of no legal effect, and are quashed from 6th of May 2024 onwards,” it read.

The court went ahead to declare “the lack or denial of an election symbol does not in any manner affect the constitutional and legal rights of a political party to participate in an election (whether general or by) and to field candidates and the Commission is under a constitutional duty to act, and construe and apply all statutory provisions, accordingly”.

The verdict further declared that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf was a political party and eligible for reserved seats. "The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was a political party, remains a political party", the order said while instructing the PTI to submit a list of its reserved seats candidates within 15 days.

Welcoming the apex court's ruling, Khan, in a post on X, wrote "Allah is Al Haq! (Allah is the truth)"

"I have repeatedly raised concerns about the prejudice exhibited by the Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan against me and PTI. Today's Supreme Court decision—establishing the ECP’s bias and malafide against PTI —reinforces our stance.

"We demand criminal proceedings under Article 6 of the Constitution against all those responsible for disenfranchising millions of voters and supporters of Pakistan’s largest political party. Sikandar Sultan Raja and the ECP members must resign immediately!

Also, I would reiterate that Chief Justice Qazi Faiz Esa must distance himself from the cases involving me or PTI," Khan wrote on X.

PTI chief Gohar Khan hailed the verdict as a 'historic decision' in the country's history. "We finally got what we deserved," he said while speaking outside the apex court. He added, "Today is a day of happiness for the 250 million people of Pakistan."

In an official reaction to the verdict, Political Advisor to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Rana Sanaullah rejected the verdict by saying the PTI got what it had never asked for. “The party had never asked to get the reserved seats and the court made it eligible for it,” he said.

Sanaullah also said that in his opinion a review petition should be filed against the verdict.

The PTI will now emerge as the largest party in the National Assembly as its seats will likely soar from 86 to 109, after it gains 23 reserved seats, Geo News reported. The opposition alliance in the National Assembly will also surge to a strength of 120, the report said. Currently, the combined opposition, including the PTI, has 97 members. Khan's party has 86 members in the lower house, 84 of whom are on board with the SIC and two independents — party leaders Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and Omar Ayub Khan.

With the majority seats of the PTI in the lower house of the legislature, the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will continue to occupy the simple majority with the strength of 209 members. The PML-N has a total of 108 members.

The dispute about the reserved seats was related to the rejection of a SIC plea by the ECP to award its share in the 70 reserved seats in the National Assembly and another 156 in the four provincial assemblies.

Khan’s PTI party could not contest the Feb 8 elections as the ECP rejected its intra-party elections and deprived it of the bat symbol for contesting the elections as a party.

Hence it was not eligible to claim the seats reserved for women and minorities that are awarded to the winning parties based on proportional representation.

So its candidates, who had won independently but with the support of PTI, were asked by the PTI leadership to join a SIC to form a parliamentary party to claim reserved seats.

The joining of PTI lawmakers made the SIC prominent, which otherwise was a dormant entity.

The ECP had rejected the SIC plea for reserved seats on the pretext that it had not contested the elections as a party and only got strength when the PTI-backed independently elected candidates joined its ranks after winning the elections. Its appeal against the ECP decision in the Peshawar High Court was also turned down in March, forcing the party to file a challenge in the Supreme Court.

In a rare move, a 13-member full bench presided over the hearing and announced the verdict on the insistence of the SIC lawyers.

Earlier, the Supreme Court on May 6 in a major relief to the PTI suspended the Peshawar High Court's decision about rejecting the SIC plea. Following the ruling, the ECP on May 14 suspended the victory notifications of 77 candidates, who belonged to other parties and were declared successful on the reserved seats.

The final ruling by the top court in the case decided the fate of those 77 reserved seats. Though it may not change the current power structure, the changes in the overall number game in the assemblies may impact the law-making in the country.