The Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) on Friday “strongly condemned” the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision to conduct fresh delimitation and “delay elections” beyond the constitutional limit of 90 days.
On Thursday, the electoral watchdog released the schedule of delimitation for provincial and national constituencies. According to it, the ECP expects to complete the delimitation exercise by December 14.
The announcement of the schedule, necessitated by the recent approval of the census results by the Council of Common Interests, effectively means that elections cannot be held in 2023.
The decision came 10 days after the official results of the census were notified and a week after the dissolution of the National Assembly.
Article 224 of the Constitution binds the watchdog to conduct the general elections within 90 days of the assembly’s dissolution. Section 17(2) of the Elections Act, on the other hand, reads, “The commission shall delimit constituencies after every census is officially published.”
Earlier, an ECP official said that the commission was not legally bound to “immediately” carry out fresh delimitation of constituencies after the official notification of census results. He pointed out that official notification of the final results of the previous census had been issued in 2021, while the ECP had published limits of constituencies in August 2022.
In a press release issued today, PBC Vice Chairman Haroon-ur-Rashid and Executive Committee Chairman Hassan Raza Pasha expressed “grave concerns” over the ECP decision.
They said the “delimitation schedule of redrawing constituencies, issued by the commission, is a tactic to delay polls” and expressed that Article 224 of the Constitution bound the ECP to conduct general elections within 90 days of the dissolution of assemblies.
The PBC stressed that it was the ECP’s duty “to conduct free, fair and transparent elections within the stipulated period as mandated by the Constitution”.
The press release added that free and fair elections were the only way out from the current “worse economic condition of the country”.
The PBC is not the first to oppose the electoral body’s decision. A day earlier, the PTI rejected the delimitation schedule and termed it a “ploy to delay the polls”.
The party announced that it would challenge the decision before the Supreme Court today. PTI spokesperson, in a statement, said the ECP’s schedule of redrawing constituencies was based on malicious intent in a clear deviation from the Constitution.
Source link: https://www.suchtv.pk/pakistan/general/item/121080-pakistan-bar-council-strongly-condemns-ecp-s-decision-to-hold-fresh-delimitation.html