Whiff of foreboding surrounds elections

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Thursday announced that all constituencies of the national and provincial assemblies would be revamped in light of the census, 2023, which meant that the next general election would not be held within 90 days.

The ECP met with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja in the chair to discuss and deliberate on the situation pertaining to the upcoming general elections and the new digital census.

In the meeting, the ECP decided to complete the delimitation of constituencies in four months. It had started the delimitation work immediately, requesting support from the provincial governments and other relevant departments.

The Constitution stipulates that if an assembly was dissolved on completion of its term, the election would be held in 60 days, but in case the dissolution came even a single day before the term’s end, the election would be held in 90 days.

Read Potential election delay as ECP tackles legalities

The last National Assembly was dissolved on Aug 9 on the advice of then Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, three days before completion of the term. That allowed the general election by the end of the first week of November.

However, just four days before the dissolution, the then government convened a meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) that passed the digital census, conducted in March-May 2023.

Article 224 of the Constitution binds the ECP to hold general elections within 90 days of the dissolution. But Section 17(2) of the Elections Act says, “The commission shall delimit constituencies after every census is officially published.”

The CCI’s decision, as per the Elections Act, mandated new delimitation of the constituencies within nearly four months, leading to speculation that the next general election could not be held in its stipulated timeframe of 90 days.

Now, the ECP confirmed those speculations to be true. The meeting on Thursday decided that the delimitation process would be completed in a period of 120 days.

“In pursuance of Article 51 of the Constitution and Section 17(2) of the Elections Act of 2017, the ECP has approved the schedule for carrying out delimitation of the constituencies afresh,” an ECP statement read.

With the announcement, the ECP initiated the regular work on revamping the constituencies, freezing all the old constituencies. It said that the entire process would be completed by Dec 14.

“The committees [for delimitation process] will be formed for all the four provinces and Islamabad on Aug 21 and training will be imparted to the constituency committees from Sept 1 to 4,” it added.

According to the ECP, preliminary list of constituencies would be published on Oct 9, and objections to it would be received from Oct 10 to Nov 8, which would be decided by Dec 9. The final list of constituencies would publish on Dec 14.

The ECP has not yet announced the election date. As per the 90-day timeframe, according to an ECP official, the polls supervisor had until Sept 12 to give a date. The official added that this date could be extended until Sept 20.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court Bar Association (WCBA) urged the apex court to direct the ECP to forthwith announce the elections date – within the 90 days from the date of dissolution of the national and provincial assemblies.

The SCBA, through its secretary and members, filed a constitution petition under Article 184(3) of the Constitution and cited the Federation, the CCI, the chief secretaries of all the provinces, and the ECP as respondents.

The petition argued that the caretaker chief ministers [of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa] were included in the CCI in violation of the Constitution and the CCI Rules, 2010, specifically Rule 5(5).

It requested the court to declare that the CCI was not properly constituted on Aug 5, 2023 and set aside its notification of the census approval as illegal, a violation of the Constitution, as well as judgments of the Supreme Court.