Committee green-lights ‘Election bill’

Proposed legislation seeks to delete ‘FATA’ from existing polls law

ISLAMABAD:

The Senate Standing Committee on Parliamentary Affairs on Friday unanimously passed "The Election (Amendment) Bill, 2023".

The meeting was chaired by Senator Taj Haider and attended by Senator Abida Muhammad Azeem, Senator Kamran Murtaza, Senator Syed Waqar Mehdi and senior officers of the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry along with its attached departments and agencies.

The proposed amendment entailed deletion of the words Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which were mentioned in the Election Act 2017.

The committee was informed that the amendment was necessary in light of the 25th constitutional amendment and the merger of FATA in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.  The Bill was supported by both the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and the government.

The committee was also informed that the proposal for amendments in Election Act, 2017 was under process and that it would be appropriate if consolidated amendments were made in the act through a government bill.

While taking up the matter of any proposed recommendations related to the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) for the year 2023-24, the committee was informed that no PSDP projects were proposed.

The committee recommended that the ministry must consider including projects that would entail a reference library for parliamentarians with a research cell. The committee recommended that a comparative study must be conducted to review such facilities in parliaments internationally so that the best version is adopted in Pakistan.

In addition to the above-mentioned agenda, the committee also discussed upcoming elections and directed the ECP to make a presentation regarding election preparedness in the next meeting.

The committee stressed the need to highlight bottlenecks so that it could make recommendations in order to resolve issues.  Matters related to the Local Body Elections in Sindh were also discussed at length.