The legal process through which the Nationalist Party was seeking two extra seats in Parliament due to mistakes in the counting of votes in the 2013 general election will have to restart from scratch following a successful appeal by the Labour Party and by the Electoral Commission.

Discrepancies in the eight and thirteenth electoral districts had seen Labour candidates elected at the expense of PN candidates.

In the eighth district, Finance Minister Edward Scicluna was elected on the final count with just eight more votes than Claudette Buttigieg, but 50 first count votes which went to the latter were mistakenly assigned to Michael Asciak.

In the thirteenth district, Justyne Caruana was elected instead of Frederick Azzopardi with a 9-vote difference, but 10 votes belonging to another PN candidate - Paul Buttigieg - went missing during the counting of votes.

Both Mr Azzopardi and Dr Buttigieg made it to parliament on the strength of constitutional provisions guaranteeing proportional representation, but the government's 9-seat majority would have been narrowed down to seven seats if either candidate was elected on their own steam.

A request for a recount in both districts was turned down, but the two candidates and the PN filed a constitutional case against the Electoral Commission, which was heard in the First Hall of the Civil Court.

On 5 February, Madam Justice Jacqueline Padovani declared that there were shortcomings in the counting of votes on both electoral districts, and that consequently, the electoral result did not reflect the wishes of the electorate.

She ruled that the PN should be given two additional seats in Parliament within 30 days: the two seats would have gone to former parliamentary secretary Edwin Vassallo, who has since become Mosta mayor, and former MP Peter Micallef.

But the award of seats was put on hold after appeals were filed by the Electoral Commission and the Labour Party. A separate appeal was also filed by Prof. Scicluna, Dr Caruana and veteran MP Joe Debono Grech, who took up the finance minister's eighth district seat.

The appeals were based on two main arguments: that the First Hall of the Civil Court did not have jurisdiction over such matters, and that the integrity of the judgment was affected by the failure to include the Labour Party in the case from the very beginning.

The first argument was dismissed by Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri, Mr Justice Giannino Caruana Demajo and Mr Justice Noel Cuschieri in the Constitutional Court, who noted that while the court could not cancel the election of any candidate, it could offer alternative remedies such as the granting of additional seats.

But the judges agreed that the Labour Party should have been included in the case, since it would be affected by the reduction of its parliamentary majority.

The Nationalist Party and Mr Vassallo questioned why the Labour Party never sought to be included in the case in the first place - as Mr Vassallo and the three Labour MPs did, successfully - stating that by arguing that it should have been included only after the sentence was issued, the Labour Party was abusing procedures in a bid to buy time.

However, the judges dismissed this argument, stating that this did not change the fact that one could not make a ruling which had a direct impact on someone who was not brought into the case.

As a result, the sentence was annulled, and procedures will have to start from scratch.