Bilour wants NA-1 to return to Peshawar

PHC issues notice to the election commission to submit reply

PESHAWAR: A senior politician of the city and former federal minister has called for renaming his home constituency as NA-1 following the recent delimitations.

Awami National Party (ANP) leader and former federal railways minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour has submitted a petition to the Peshawar High Court (PHC), through Sangeen Khan Advocate, explaining the historical significance of NA-1 and that Bilour has consistently contested the constituency ever since he started his political career.

Contending that NA-1 defined his political legacy, Sangeen argued that the unnecessary and unwarranted change of number will only erase historic electoral history associated with this constituency.

He urged the court to direct the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), to reallocate NA-1 to Peshawar city, which has been renamed as NA-31 (Peshawar-V).



While arguing in the court Sangeen said pointed out that under rule 10 of the elections rules, the limitation of the constituencies shall start from the northern end of the district.

However, Sangeen claimed that in the case of Peshawar, the ECP had ‘wrongly’ extended this principle to the numerical order of the constituencies which is ‘unwarranted’ and beyond the scope of rules and thus ‘illegal’ and ‘unlawful.’

The ECP has started the numbering of constituencies from northern parts of the country, granting NA-1 to Chitral district. The constituency which was formerly labelled as NA-1 - Peshawar-III, was reassigned as NA-31- Peshawar-V.



“They [contestants] have been taking pride in the fact that they have been the first constituency of the National Assembly of Pakistan,” he said.

Late Benazir Bhutto and other head of the party and former chief ministers have contested election from the same NA-1. In all previous delimitations, the constituency was named as NA-1 in numerical order of the constituencies of the national assembly.



“The delimitation does not necessitate the alteration in the number attributed to a constituency. The change in the numerical order of the constituency is bereft of any rational jurisdiction,” he told the bench.

Moreover, since the ECP had failed to cite any proper administration of any technical justification in changing the numbers of the constituencies, therefore the constituency number should be allocated back to NA-31 (Peshawar-V).

A two-judge bench of PHC, comprising Justice Syed Muhammad Attique Shah and Justice Syed Arshad Ali, heard the case on Friday and issued a notice to the top poll body, directing it to submit a reply by June 12.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2018.