LAHORE  -  A Lahore High Court (LHC) judge on Monday referred petitions against the non-allocation of reserved seats to the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) to the LHC chief justice with a request for the formation of a larg­er bench for their hearing. 

Justice Raheel Kamran passed the orders while hearing petitions filed by SIC Chairman Sahibzada Hamid Raza and others. 

During the proceedings, a provincial law officer submitted that the reply to the petition was almost ready; however, it was yet to be signed by the Advo­cate General Punjab, who was currently busy before the Supreme Court of Paki­stan in a case. At this stage, a federal law officer re­quested the court to grant two weeks’ time for filing the reply to the petition. 

However, the court ob­served that a reasonable amount of time had been granted in the matter and directed the law officer to file a reply to the petition and connected petitions by the next date of hearing. 

The petitioners’ counsel then requested the court to refer the matter to a larg­er bench, adding that iden­tical petitions had been heard by larger benches of the Peshawar High Court and the Sindh High Court. The court agreed with the request of the petitioners’ counsel, observing that the matter involves ques­tions of public importance in relation to the inter­pretation of Constitution­al provisions as well as the vires of Section 104 of the Election Act 2017. Subse­quently, the court directed the office to place the case along with identical peti­tions before the LHC chief justice for the formation of a larger bench to hear and decide the matter.