Candidates can file nomination papers from May 23. PHOTO: AFP
The top poll body (ECP) on Wednesday said that the elections for the top local government seats will be held on June 8, with the process of filing nomination papers for this purpose to commence from May 23. According to the schedule, returning officers will examine the validity of candidates from May 25-26 with the list of candidates and their symbols being finalised by June 1.
Consolidated results of these polls will be announced on June 9, a day after polls.
Jam Khan Shoro, the Sindh Minister for Local Government, has welcomed the ECP’s decision to announce the election schedule and vowed to facilitate the upcoming elections.
“It’s the election commission’s job to hold mayor elections and the Sindh government will be ready to facilitate it,” he told The Express Tribune.
He added that the PPP believes in democracy and would strengthen local bodies as per law.
But doubts on the polls have been cast after the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday reserved its judgement on political parties’ share of reserved seats in Shikarpur, Badin and Malir district councils after successful independent candidates from these districts sought a judicial resolution for award of reserved seats to independents.
Two judges of SHC have restrained the ECP from calculating and announcing the share for political parties in seats reserved for women, youth, labourer or peasants and non-Muslim candidates in these district councils.
However, it is expected that polls may proceed in the province except in these three districts.
Elections for mayors, deputy mayors, chairmen and deputy chairmen have been delayed in the province since early January after the multi-phase direct election process was completed late last year. The process was delayed because the Sindh government first amended the law barring voting for mayors through secret balloting was challenged in the high court.
The high court subsequently overturned the amendment on February 10. But the Sindh government challenged the SHC’s decision in the SC.
The apex court, however, turned down the Sindh government’s appeal in mid-April, ruling that the mayor can be voted in through secret ballots instead of a show of hands and told the ECP to hold elections within 60 days.
Subsequently, the ECP on May 4 issued a schedule for the election process to fill up indirect seats in the district councils, municipal committees, town committees, metropolitan corporations and district municipal corporations in Sindh.
However, the process was halted again when independent candidates approached the SHC after ECP denied allocating reserved seats to them.
The polling body notified that only political parties were eligible to receive allotment of reserved seats. The independents were further stopped from joining parties of their choice at the last minute because the rules stipulated that they must do so within seven days of the results being announced. Fearing disenfranchisement, they urged the court to amend the rules allowing them to join any party of their liking which suspended the ECP notification till May 26.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 19th, 2016.
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