Naushero Feroze delimitation: Court wants to see proposal to redraw constituencies

Election commission plans to delimit provincial assembly constituencies only.

KARACHI: Pakistan Peoples Party MNA Zafar Ali Shah’s proposal to redraw two National Assembly constituencies in Naushero Feroze is wanted by the Sindh High Court (SHC).

In April last year, the SHC had ordered the election commission authorities to redraw provincial assembly constituencies. In turn, the provincial election commissioner called for proposals and objections from relevant political parties. In his proposal to the election commission, the petitioner suggested, however, that the national assembly constituencies should also be redrawn.

But the Sindh election commissioner neither took any action nor replied to the petitioner. Even, Shah alleges, he did not respond to a reminder sent by him.

The legislator has now taken the chief election commissioner, census commissioner, provincial election commissioner, joint census commissioner, provincial chief secretary and revenue secretary to court for failing to consider his proposal.

The constituencies in Naushero Feroze were first bifurcated in 1990 and then again in 2002 to benefit the then ruling parties, Shah claimed. The NA-211 constituency comprising the talukas of Moro and Naushero Feroze had a population of 530,085, according to the 1998 census. The NA-212 constituency comprising talukas of Kandhiaro, Mehrabpur and Bhiria had 556,766 residents.



These two constituencies need to be redrawn after the creation of a new taluka, Mehrabpur, the PPP leader’s lawyer, Haq Nawaz Talpur, argued. “In the two constituencies, the difference of 25,961 votes can play a significant role in deciding the outcome of the elections,” he said.

The election commission has failed to redraw the voters’ boundaries on its own as required under Section 10 of the Delimitation of Constituencies Act of 1974, Talpur submitted.

The lawyer appealed to the court to direct the election commission to redraw both the constituencies before the upcoming general election.

On Friday, SHC Justice Irfan Sadaat Khan, heading a division bench, took up the case. The judges wanted, however, to see Shah’s proposal as well as the reminder sent to the election commission. The court directed the petitioner’s lawyer to submit both documents by January 16, when the matter would be taken up again for hearing.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 5^th, 2013.