ISLAMABAD: In a meeting of the Parliamentary Special Committee on Delimitation of Constituencies, representatives of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) accepted recommendations that would nullify the delimitation the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is carrying out on the basis of the 2017 national census’ provisional results.
Speaker of the National Assembly created the Committee after several lawmakers had protested the delimitation the ECP had carried out. The ECP had made the draft delimitations public on the 5th of March of this year.
The committee had initially formed a working group under the direction of Minister for Privatisation Daniyal Aziz, which had then presented its recommendations. Opposition lawmakers in the committee, however, later disowned the recommendations.
On Wednesday, the committee discussed and endorsed the recommendations, sending them to members who were absent from Wednesday’s meeting.
If accepted by Parliament—which is a likely possibility—the recommendations will undo the entire delimitation exercise the ECP has carried out, mere months before the general elections.
The recommendations are as follows:
- Constitutional amendment bill may be passed by deleting provisions of constitutional amendment along with the provisional census data being used because the final census data would not be available before the elections. “Therefore, the question of delay of elections does not arise and we are well before the election schedule”;
- That the amendment to Section 20 of the Elections Act, 2017 be converted into an ordinance to bring sub-rule (5) of rule 10 of Election Rules, 2017 into the main text of the act, thereby blocking the fractionalisation at the district level and clarifying the administrative boundaries and other matters;
- An inquiry be instituted under the Pakistan Commission of Inquiry Act, 2017 under a retired judge to inquire into gross legal violations by delimitation committees and their motivations, including but not limited to the movement of members of the committees, their communication in addition to examining them under oath. Furthermore, it would determine reasons for the commission to overlook gross violation of uniformity in applications of the law and rules. The inquiry will also look into detailed chronological events with regard to the recent census and compare it with previous PES norms and standards, and reasons and the motivation misleading this committee and parliament leading to the constitutional amendment for provisional census data delimitation;
- Public interest litigation be filed under Article 184 of the Constitution in the public interest on the gross violation of law and tampering of rights by the ECP and its motivators; and
- Resolution by parliament itemising grave violations by the ECP and FBS, and providing for a remedy by respective institutions.