Government to contact PPP for passage of delimitation bill

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leadership has decided to contact the PPP leaders in a bid to get the constitutional amendment bill on delimitation of constituencies passed from the Senate. The PML-N leadership has assigned the task to Khawaja Saad Rafique, Rana Tanveer and Sardar Ayaz Sadiq to contact the PPP Senators for the passage of this bill, the sources said.
The sources in the PML-N said the party wanted early passage of the constitutional amendment bill that would lead to new delimitation of constituencies for the general elections according to the provisional results of the census held this year. The National Assembly had already passed the bill with the consensus of political parties, but the bill could not sail through the Senate due to differences between the government and opposition parties.
The sources claimed that the government had been in contact with the Pakistan People's Party to remove its concerns so that the amendment could be approved in the 104 member Senate. The bill was stuck in the Senate due to opposition parties mainly PPP, which came up with some new demands.
Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had repeatedly said that elections would be held on time when the National Assembly would complete its tenure in first week of June next year. However, some PML-N leadership had expressed apprehensions about the stability of the political system due to behaviour of opposition parties inside and outside the Parliament.
Speaker National Assembly Ayaz Sadiq expressed his views about dangers to the system, saying he wanted the assemblies to complete their tenure but he did not see it to happen. The sources in the PML-N saw the delay in passage of the bill in the Senate as part of attempts to destabilize the democratic system. The PML-N leadership had been saying that unseen forces were trying to undermine the democratic parliamentary system, the sources said.
They cited the sit-in at Faizabad as part of series of incidents in the last four years to destabilize the PML-N government. The coming days are crucial for the political system because if the PML-N and PPP develop a consensus on the bill on delimitation of constituencies, it would give enough time to the Election Commission to carry out its work and pave the way for timely elections.