The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has announced to complete the process of delimitation of constituencies by May 3, next year, so that next general elections can be held in time. Talking to media persons here on Friday, Secretary ECP Babar Yaqoob said that a detailed meeting of all relevant stakeholders had been held in the Commission to deliberate on numerous aspects and requirements of the constituencies' delimitation.
The secretary said that five committees, including four provincial and one for Islamabad and FATA, had been constituted and given a task to gather the details and maps pertaining to demarcation of the constituencies. He said ECP would formally start the process of delimitation of constituencies from January 15 and a delimitation proposal would be prepared within 45 days.
The secretary also urged the provincial governments to allocate staff to undertake the exercise of registration of seven-and-a-half million voters that are presently not registered. Earlier, the ECP held a meeting in Islamabad to discuss arrangements for delimitation of constituencies and other electoral matters, wherein all the provincial election commissioners, chief secretaries, secretary Pakistan Board of Statistics and chairman NADRA participated to give their input on the delimitation of the constituencies.
The last hurdle in way of the delimitation of the constituencies on the basis of provisional results of the census was cleared on December 19 after the Senate approved the 'Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2017' pertaining to delimitation of the constituencies. The bill was passed with 84 votes in favour of the motion and one against.
The Senate was unable to vote on the bill for three times in November owing to lack of quorum until the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had to hold talks with opposition parties to pass the Constitution Amendment Bill. Under the terms of the amendment, the total number of National Assembly seats will remain unchanged with adjustments in seats allocation for the provinces in accordance with the Census 2017 results. Punjab will lose its seats as its population has fallen to 52 percent in 2017 from 56 percent in 1998. On the other hand, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will gain the seats lost by Punjab, while Sindh's share will remain the same.
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