Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The federal government has yet to initiate the process for appointment of ECP members in place of the incumbents who have retired after completion their service tenures.

All the four members of the ECP namely Justice (r) Riaz Kiani from Punjab, Justice (r) Roshin Aisani from Sindh, Justice (r) Shahzad Akbar from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Justice (r) Fazalur Rehman from Balochistan have retired after completion of their 5-year constitutional term on June 10th.

Though the government succeeded to get pass the 22constitutional amendment from the parliament but it is still silent on the appointment of new members, sources told Daily Times.

According to the constitution, consultation of the prime minister and the opposition leader is mandatory to initiate proceedings for the ECP appointments. If both of them fail to reach a consensus, the matter will be referred to a 12-member parliamentary committee that has already been established. However, sources said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Opposition Leader Khursheed Shah had not initiated any proceeding on the issue.

The delay in appointment of ECP members may affect proceedings of important cases including Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI’s) foreign funding case and the case against National Assembly speaker Ayaz Sadiq, to name a few.

It may be mentioned here that the chief election commissioner can only run day-to-day administrative affairs of the commission while the constitutional and legal matters cannot be decided without active participation of the ECP members. Given the new constitutional amendment, now technocrats and bureaucrats can also become the members of the commission but for that the government will have to start proceedings for the appointments.