A 13-member full court of the SC, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa, conducted the hearing on the SIC's reserved seats case.

Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Munib Akhtar, Justice Yahya Khan Afridi, Justice Aminuddin Khan, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Justice Ayesha A Malik, Justice Athar Minallah, Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, Justice Irfan Saadat Khan, and Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan were part of the full court bench.

It is to be noted here that in May 2024, the Supreme Court suspended the judgement of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to allocate reserved seats to other parties.

Justice Mansoor Ali Shah had remarked during the hearing of the case that “the mandate given by the people should be properly represented in the Parliament.”

The apex court had also sent the matter of reserved seats to the judges’ committee to decide whether the case would be heard by the same bench or a larger bench should be constituted.

It is worth mentioning here that the ECP on March 4, 2024, accepted the pleas of SIC’s rival political parties and ruled that the vacant seats in the national and provincial assemblies would be allocated to other political parties on the basis of seats they won in the February 8 general elections.

As a result, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-backed SIC lost as many as 77 reserved seats in the national and provincial assemblies.

The Peshawar High Court (PHC) had also rejected the petitions filed by the SIC, seeking reserved seats for women and minorities.