Election commission: Asset declarations to be placed on ECP website

Officials say printing heavy gazettes cost too much time and money.

ISLAMABAD:

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is weighing out the option of putting up asset declarations submitted by parliamentarians on its website rather than spending huge amounts of money on printing over-sized books, sources in the ECP told The Express Tribune.

“We have discussed various options … we believe printing heavy gazettes containing details of parliamentarians’ assets not only costs too much but is also time consuming,” a senior official said.

The ECP has, so far, been unable to make public the statements of the assets and liabilities of members of the Punjab and Sindh Assemblies.

“Declarations submitted by the Punjab and Sindh assemblies are in the process of printing … we are getting increasingly frustrated over the inordinate delay in the process of printing,” the official said.

It is mandatory for a member of the Senate, National or Provincial Assembly under Section 42A of the Representation of the People Act, 1976 and Section 25A of the Senate (Elections) Act, 1975 to submit a declaration of his/her assets and liabilities every year to the Election Commission.

According to the election laws, every parliamentarian has to submit a statement of assets and liabilities of his own, his spouse and dependents annually to the ECP in September every year.

Subsequently, the commission publishes all the statements in the official gazette, copies of which can be obtained on payment.

The chief of the ECP has the authority to suspend those who fail to file statements of their assets and liabilities within the prescribed period, by October 15. However, after a lapse of almost six months, the commission has yet to publish the asset declarations of Punjab and Sindh assemblies.

“This is why we are considering putting the scanned copies of parliamentarians’ declarations on the website instead of going through such a lengthy and time consuming exercise,” the official argued.

He added the verified copies of statements of assets and liabilities will be scanned and put up on the commission’s website.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 6^th, 2011.