PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has directed the returning officer of a provincial assembly constituency, where a transgender person is a candidate, to arrange separate queues for her community members at PK-81 polling stations in the capital city.

The returning officer was also directed by a bench consisting of Justice Shakeel Ahmad and Justice Syed Arshad Ali to ensure security of the transgender candidate, Sobia Khan, and transgender voters of the constituency in line with the law.

The court issued the directives while disposing of a petition of Ms Sobia seeking multiple reliefs from the court, including allocation of special seats in the national and provincial assemblies for her community.

Bench also directs returning officer to ensure their security

The petitioner, whose name on her CNIC is Mohammad Bilal, insisted when the high court would order the fixing of ‘quota’ in assemblies for transgender persons, her nomination papers filed for election to a general seat in Peshawar’s PK-81 constituency should be considered for those reserved seats. She had made the chief election commissioner, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial election commissioner, returning officer for PK-81 constituency, federal government through attorney general for Pakistan, and KP government through its advocate general as respondents to the petition.

The bench, in its three-page order, has not addressed her plea for allocation of special seats for transgender persons.

Lawyers Sahibzada Riazatul Haq, Mehwish Muhib Kakakhel and Batool Rafaqat represented the petitioner, whereas advocate Mohsin Kamran Siddique appeared for the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Lawyers for the petitioner said that their client was born as a transgender person but as there was no separate category for the community in computerised national identity cards, her father got her CNIC made as a man.

They said that the petitioner was a well-educated person with a graduate degree and worked as a social activist, especially campaigning for the welfare of transgender community.

The lawyers said that the petitioner also worked for an online news agency as a journalist and hosted programmes at three FM radio channels and was the first transgender member of a dispute resolution council in the province.

They said that she had submitted nomination papers to contest general elections in PK-81 constituency as an independent candidate eyeing a ‘reserved’ seat.The counsel, however, said when she approached the relevant returning officer for receiving nomination papers, the latter told her that her nomination papers won’t be accepted for that seat as no ‘quota’ for transgender persons had so far been fixed by the ECP.

The lawyers argued that when a transgender person had the right to participate in elections as a voter, why the assemblies didn’t have seats reserved for the community.

They wondered as National and provincial assemblies had seats reserved for religious minorities and women, why the legislature didn’t have such representation for the transgender community.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2024