ECP issues final report on 16 seats of NMDs

Elections on these seats to be held this year

ISLAMABAD: Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday issued a notification of the final report along with list of constituencies pertaining to 16 general seats allocated to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly in respect newly merged districts of erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

According to a notification, a total of 11 representations were received against preliminary publication of constituencies and the commission had fixed dates of hearings and issued notices to all concerned in this regard.

The hearing process of the representations commenced on February 13, and culminated on February 21. After incorporation of ECP, the final list of constituencies has been published now in accordance with the provisions of section 21 of the Elections Act, 2017 read with rule 14 of the Election Rules, 2017. The final list of constituencies of the provincial assembly, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in respect of erstwhile Fata, specifying the areas included in each constituency on form 7.

The commission notified the preliminary report and list of constituencies on January 2, 2019 by following the principles of the delimitation of constituencies set out in section 20 of the Elections Act, 2017.

The principles envisaged therein are that all constituencies shall, as far as practicable, be delimited having regard to the distribution of population in geographically compact areas, physical features, existing boundaries of administrative units, facilities of communication and public convenience and other cognate factors to ensure homogeneity in the creation of constituencies.

The notification said to facilitate the general public and for the sake of transparency of the delimitation process, the preliminary list of constituencies of the provincial assembly pertaining to ex-Fata was also made available on ECP's official website. Similarly, the constituency-wise marked maps were also placed on the website to facilitate voters to file representations. A Facilitation Centre was set up at the ECP Secretariat Islamabad to provide copies of marked as well as unmarked maps of the districts and to receive representations from the voters.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2019.