Federal Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar revealed on Thursday that legal consultations were going on following the Supreme Court’s suo motu notice and its judgement in the poll delay case.
Speaking to the international media, the law minister maintained that "elections should be held [for the national and provincial assemblies] at the same time".
"The Constitution states that the ECP is burdened with the responsibility of conducting elections," he furthered stressing that "the mechanism for holding elections according to the Constitution exists", implying that the court orders were contrary to it.
“The Constitution states that elections should be held within 90 days after dissolution, but there are many schemes in the Constitution and many other provisions of law,” he added.
He said that in 2010, amendments were made in articles 224 and 224(A) of the Constitution due to several experiments of elections.
He said that Article 217 states that elections in the country would be held simultaneously under the supervision of the Election Commission of Pakistan while Article 218(3) states that the Election Commission of Pakistan is responsible for conducting transparent and impartial elections in the country.
Reflecting on the "controversial" dissolution of the Punjab Assembly, he said that "the matter was first referred to the Lahore High Court. The Punjab governor never signed the summary sent by the chief minister and 48 hours later the assembly dissolved on its own".
"A nine-member bench began hearing the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) polls delay case after the chief justice took a suo motu notice of the matter," he said, and added "Two judges had already opined on the matter while two others recused themselves from hearing the case after expressing their opinion".
He also lamented that the requests for a full court hearing were not entertained by the five-member bench later on.
Listing down his reservations, Tarar said that "petitions [pertaining to the elections] are sub judice in the high courts of Punjab and K-P, there are security risks involved in both the provinces, the federal cabinet declared that the 'minority judgement' is unacceptable, the court did not even listen to the political parties, the federal cabinet has expressed concerns over the [recent] SC judgment" and that "senior judges are being kept away from the bench".
In a nutshell, he said "legal discussions are underway over the judgment" hinting that the government did not plan to bow down any time soon.
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