Govt kicks off process for appointing new CEC

Parliamentary affairs ministry compiling names for the post

ISLAMABAD: The federal government has kicked off the process for the appointment of a new chief election commissioner (CEC). The incumbent CEC, Sardar Muhammad Raza, will retire in December this year.

Sources said the parliamentary affairs ministry has started compiling names for the post.

Parliamentary Affairs minister Azam Swati will soon brief Prime Minister Imran Khan about the names and decide the procedure for holding consultations with the opposition leader in the National Assembly on the matter.

According to the constitution, consultations between the prime minister and the opposition leader are necessary for the appointment of the election commissioner.

If the prime minister and the opposition leader do not agree on a name, the matter is handed over to a parliamentary committee.
If a new election commissioner is not appointed after the tenure of the incumbent one ends, the local bodies elections as well as many cases against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and other political parties might be postponed.

The matter of the appointment of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) members from Sindh and Balochistan is already pending in the court.

In August, the parliamentary affairs ministry had notified the appointment of Khalid Mehmood Siddiqui and Munir Ahmed Kakar as ECP members from Sindh and Balochistan respectively after President Arif Alvi’s approval.

The appointments came seven months after Abdul Ghaffar Soomro and Justice (retd) Shakeel Baloch — the ECP members from Sindh and Balochistan — retired in January this year.

However, Chief Election Commissioner Sardar Raza Khan had refused to take oath from the two new members nominated by the government.

LHC to take up plea against NAB chief’s appointment

The commissioner in his letter to Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs had written that the new members were not appointed in accordance with Articles 213 and 214 of the constitution.

Islamabad-based lawyer Jahangir Khan Jadoon on August 27 challenged the appointment of the ECP Sindh and Balochistan members in the Islamabad High Court and requested it to stop implementation of notification issued by Ministry for Parliamentary Affairs.

ECP Secretary Babar Yaqoob Fatah Muhammad in a three-page reply adopted the stance that appointment of these members is in violation of the Constitution’s Article 213 as the procedure defined in the Constitution was not followed.

The Aam Log Ittehad Party has also challenged the appointment of the ECP members in Sindh High Court.

The government defended its decision of unilaterally nominating the two ECP members, saying President Dr Arif Alvi made the appointments in line with the Constitution and on the recommendations of the institutions concerned.

In response, the ECP reiterated that the federal government’s notification with regard to appointment of provincial ECP members was illegal and against the Constitution.

Last month,  a two-member bench of the Supreme Court formed to hear a petition filed for the transfer of the case to Islamabad from other courts stood dissolved after the judges, Justice Manzoor Malik and Justice Sardar Tariq Masood, recused themselves from hearing the case.

Justice Maqbool Baqar referred the matter to the chief justice of Pakistan for the constitution of a new bench.