PPP airs reservations on delimitation panel recommendations

Nafisa Shah says party not present during deliberations

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Monday expressed reservations on Special Committee on Delimitation Chairman Daniyal Aziz's demand of holding the forthcoming general elections in accordance with previous census results.

Referring to the recommendations made by the Daniyal-led committee on Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) constituency delimitation, PPP spokesperson Nafisa Shah said her party was not present during deliberations. “We neither endorse nor agree with Aziz’s statement,” she said.

Shah said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)’s backtrack on agreed upon formula for timely elections was incomprehensible since the constitutional amendment had been unanimously passed by both house of Parliament.

"It seems the PML-N wants the elections delayed. This we do not agree with,” she said. The PPP leader said the committee appeared to be functioning in a pugnacious manner. “The pertinent forum for appeals is the ECP,” said Shah. “And the right forum to report violations of Section 20 of Elections Act is the Supreme Court (SC).”

Soon after the ECP released new delimitations for public scrutiny, some political parties and non-government organisations (NGOs) highlighted discrepancies in fresh marking of boundaries in certain constituencies. When the matter was raised in the National Assembly, the speaker constituted a parliamentary panel headed by Deputy Speaker Javed Murtaza Abbasi to look into the matter. In its maiden meeting, the main panel constituted a sub-committee tagged as working group to formulate recommendations for the main committee to be later presented before the National Assembly.

The five recommendations

The recommendations called for scraping the 24th Amendment and bringing another to allow the next general elections to be held on the basis of the delimitations currently in use.

Also recommended are changes in the relevant law that prescribe procedure for hearing objections over any fresh delimitation. This implies the panel wants authority taken away from the ECP and it being vested in some other body with the power to hear complaints.



The panel also demanded the constitution of a high-powered commission through a presidential ordinance, to be later adopted by Parliament, to probe the Panama Papers controversy and the motive behind the ECPs committee that marked fresh constituency boundaries.

The commission may exercise its authority to arrest members on the five ECP committees who drafted these delimitations.

The penal also recommended the main committee to approach the SC and file a petition under Article 184 against the ECP.