Election Commission of Pakistan. PHOTO: FILE
Instead of demarcation of boundaries, the provincial government has ended up with the ‘delimitation’ of constituencies.
The ECP will forward the objections against demarcation of boundaries for local government seats to the provincial government with a time period of 15 days to rectify the error.
The work for delimitation of constituencies for local government seats will start soon after the fixation of demarcation.
The ECP on Monday held an important advisory meeting led by the acting chief election commissioner to discuss the constituencies for local government elections in Punjab.
Sources said that in many districts, the Punjab government had carried out delimitation of constituencies instead of demarcation of boundaries and that the measure was against the rules of the ECP.
Sources further revealed that the ECP had decided to apprise the Punjab government of the objections in a written form and give the government 15 days to fix the boundaries.
The meeting decided that work on local government constituencies would start immediately after the fixation of boundaries.
Pakistan re-elected to OPCW’s executive council
The provincial election commissioner will also head a meeting today (Tuesday) regarding the objections on boundaries.
Meanwhile, the ECP had also written a letter to the provincial election commissioner of Punjab seeking various documents including notification of urban and rural local areas notified by the Punjab government, number of metropolitan corporations, tehsil councils, municipal corporations, municipal committees, town committees, neighbourhood councils and number of villages and panchayat councils in the province.
The local government and community development department of the Punjab government has issued various notifications, demarcating areas in different districts across the province, citing sections of the recently passed Punjab local Government Act, the Punjab Village, Panchayats, and Neighbourhood Councils Act, 2019, and Punjab demarcation, classification and naming of local areas rules.
Under Article 222 (b) of the Constitution, the parliament is to provide by law for the delimitation of constituencies by the ECP.
Section 221 (1) of the Elections Act, 2017 reads, “For the purpose of holding elections to the local governments, the Commission shall delimit constituencies of the local governments, including union councils, wards in a union council, a ward in a district council or ward in a municipal committee, as far as possible and subject to necessary modifications…..”.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ