The total number of seats in the National Assembly has been reduced from 342 to 336 after a decrease in the constituencies in erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Area by six, according to the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) preliminary delimitation report.
Similarly, the number of general seats has fallen from 272 to 266.
The commission has said the voters of the relevant constituencies could file their objections on the preliminary report till June 30.
The ECP would decide on the objections from July 1 to July 30.
It added that the objections would have to be submitted in the form of a memorandum to the ECP secretary.
Eight copies of the objections and maps would have to be submitted to the commission. Objections by courier, post or fax would not be accepted. According to the commission, the final results of the delimitations would be published in the second week of August.
The ECP had expressed satisfaction over the progress made so far on the delimitation of constituencies.
It has directed that all the work be completed on merit and in accordance with the schedule fixed by it in accordance with the law.
Punjab will have 141 general seats in the NA, Sindh 6, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 45, Balochistan 16 and three will be from Islamabad. Women will have 60 reserved seats while minorities will have 10 seats.
An NA constituency in K-P has been demarcated at 788,933 people, Islamabad 667,789, Punjab 780,069, Sindh 784,500, and Balochistan 77,946.
Punjab's constituencies will start from Attock's NA-49 and end at NA-189 in Rajanpur, while those of Sindh will start from NA-190 Jacobabad and continue till NA-250 Karachi. Similarly, K-P's NA seats will begin with Chitral from NA-1 to NA-45 and Balochistan's constituencies will be from NA-251 to NA-266.
Seats from Islamabad will be from NA-46 to NA-48.
Also read: Delimitation process to continue uninterrupted till August 3: ECP
As for provincial assemblies, the commission said Punjab would have 371 seats of which 297 will be general seats. Sindh would have 168 seats of which 130 will be general seats.
The Balochistan Assembly will have 65 seats of which 51 will be general seats. The K-P Assembly will have 145 seats of which 115 will be general seats.
The ECP said that a constituency of the Punjab Assembly would comprise of 308,713 voters, Sindh Assembly 368,112, K-P Assembly 370,336 and Balochistan Assembly 241,864.
An ECP official said the provisional results of the 6th national census conducted in 2017 were published on January 3, 2018.
Accordingly the delimitation of national and provincial assemblies was carried out by the commission on the basis of these results as a one-time dispensation granted by the amendment made to Article 51(5) of the Constitution for general elections 2018 for National Assembly and provincial assemblies.
He added that under Article 51(5) of the Constitution and Section 17 of the Elections Act 2017, delimitation of constituencies was conducted on the basis of population in accordance with the last census officially published.
He noted that under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, the erstwhile FATA was merged with the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
The 12 seats allocated to FATA were abolished and six seats were allocated to K-P on the basis of population. Therefore, the number of seats in the National Assembly was reduced to 266 from 272.
On April 11, the commission had announced the delimitation schedule for constituencies of the national and provincial assemblies for the next general elections, days after declaring that it would not wait for the fresh digital census.
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