Following an amendment in Article 51 of the Constitution seats have been reallocated to the four provinces, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). Punjab would have a total of nine lesser seats -- seven general and two reserved seats for women in the next National Assembly. These seats have been distributed to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and ICT proportionate to the increase in their population size.
The ECP has called another meeting of high-ups of the Statistical Division and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) today (Monday). They have already been directed to provide maps and copies of the district census report by January 10. Chief secretaries of the provinces were directed to freeze revenue limits of areas from December 22nd. After necessary preparatory work, including training of staff, practical work on the remarking of the boundaries of constituencies will start next week. Simultaneously, the ECP is to start door-to-door verification of 7.3 million new voters and deletion of 0.92 million on the voter list. In the wake of the new revision the country would have more than 104 million registered voters, making it one of the world’s largest democracies. While these processes and other preparatory work will be under way at the ECP, political parties will be in the campaign mode for the general elections due by the end of July or early August this year. History shows that our political parties focus on public meetings and rallies and ignore the technical modalities of elections with delimitations topmost amongst this. They should be vigilant instead against “gerrymandering” -- the practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating boundaries. It is alleged that the then authorities did gerrymandering with all the liberty before 2002 general elections conducted by military ruler General Pervez Musharraf.
This was purportedly done to give advantage to some certain parties particularly in Karachi. This was done with such impunity that if the current constituency map of Karachi is joined together it does not translate into Karachi’s map at all. After the exercise carried out before 2002 which was done on the basis of the 1998 population census, the delimitation process starting this month will be the first such thorough exercise. The country had a housing and population headcount in 2017 after 19 long years. Since no census was conducted in all that time, the ECP did only minor adjustments in the constituencies for the 2008 and 2013 general elections and mainly relied on the 2002 delimitations. In the process of delimitation and updating the electoral rolls, the law stipulates that a draft is put on display for the general public and political parties to contest it if they see any anomalies. Neither the political parties nor the general public ever bother to check the drafts and raise objection in the stipulated timeframe. Political parties start marking allegations of “dhandli” (foul play) only after the poll results come in. Had they been vigilant when these processes were under way, they could minimise the chances of pre- and post-poll rigging.
Ironically, when meetings to discuss election processes are called, these political parties send their fourth and fifth tier leaders to attend them. It is high time now that all political parties take active part and remain vigilant when these tricky processes are carried out rather than crying over spilled milk.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 8th, 2018.
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