Court orders delimitation of two NA constituencies

Petitioner say these constituencies were unfairly demarcated.

KARACHI: Once a stalwart of the Pakistan Peoples Party and now an associate of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Syed Zafar Ali Shah, has won a legal battle for the re-demarcation of two national assembly constituencies in Naushero Feroze.

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Tuesday ordered the election commission to re-draw the boundaries of the two NA constituencies - NA-211 and NA-212 - within 30 days.

Shah had gone to the court against the election commission and other authorities for not considering his proposal to re-draw electoral units in the district. In April last year, the high court, while hearing another petition, had ordered the election commission to redraw provincial assembly constituencies. The provincial election commissioner called for proposals and objections from political parties.

In his proposal, Zafar Ali Shah had suggested that the national assembly constituencies should also be redrawn. But, the Sindh election commissioner neither took any action nor replied to the petitioner, he alleged.



Shah argued that the constituencies in Naushero Feroze district were first bifurcated in 1990 and then again in 2002 to benefit the then ruling parties. 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,” he said.

The election commission has failed to redraw the electoral boundaries as required under the Delimitation of Constituencies Act of 1974, Talpur said. He appealed the court direct the election commission redraw the constituencies before the elections.

On Tuesday, an election commission official told that constituencies could not be re-drawn without conducting fresh census. The lawyer contended that his client only wanted re-demarcation of existing constituencies.

Headed by Justice Maqbool Baqar, the bench directed the election commission to re-draw the constituencies within 30 days in accordance with laws. The petition was then disposed of.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13^th, 2013.