Local govt elections: ECP appoints 11 delimitation authorities

For the 29 districts in Sindh, eleven DAs have been given authority.

HYDERABAD:

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has appointed 11 delimitation authorities (DAs) for Sindh, who will receive and dispose of objections about local government constituencies.

The DAs, which include 10 regional election commissioners (RECs) and a Hyderabad election tribunal judge, will start receiving objections and representations from June 11, according to a notification issued on Thursday. The process has twice been delayed as the ECP was awaiting a response from the judiciary about its proposal for appointing judicial officers as DAs. A meeting of the National Judicial Policy Making Committee, chaired by Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk on May 30, turned down the ECP request for the judicial officers, citing the backlog of litigation in the courts.

"We wanted to appoint each DA to cover two districts but due to the shortage of officers, some of the DAs have been given jurisdiction over three districts," Attaur Rehman, the ECP joint secretary for local government elections, told The Express Tribune.

For the 29 districts in Sindh, seven DAs have been given authority over three districts each and four over two districts each.

As per the schedule, the preliminary list of constituencies will be published on June 11 while the DAs will receive objections from June 11 to June 30. The objections will be disposed of from June 25 to July 16 and the DAs will make public their decisions on July 23. The final list of constituencies will be displayed on July 28.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2015.