Northern Areas (NAs) administration has launched emergency campaign to formulate electoral lists for the upcoming polling of the Northern Areas Legislative Assembly and District council scheduled for October 10, across Gilgit-Baltistan. Sources said that Kana division has directed the NAs-administration to start working on the compilation of the electoral lists to complete them well before the election date.
According to the NAs election Secretariat, around 3 million people of Gilgit-Baltistan would cast their vote in seven Districts for directly electing Members of Northern Areas Legislative Assembly, members of District council and members of Union Councils. Earlier, there was 36-member Northern Areas Legislative Assembly comprising 24 direct elected members in addition to the six technocrat and six women reserved seats.
Last month, the Minister for Kashmir Affairs and chairman of Northern Areas Qamer Zaman Kaira dissolved the six member cabinet of the Assembly. However, the assembly is still intact and it is likely that the Assembly would also be dissolved by the end of this month or in the first week of September.
It is learnt that the government has planned to increase six additional seats of the Legislative Assembly. These seats would be given to one each for District Ghizer, Gilgit, Ghanche, Hunza, Khapulo and Diamer. Sources said that under the new proposed Constitutional package, 33 percent representation would be given to women in line with the National and Provincial Assemblies of Pakistan under a rule framed by former President Pervez Musharraf. The existing six technocrat seats in the Assembly are likely to be abolished and the strengthen of the new Assembly would be 40-member body.
However, the people and the sitting members of the Assembly have great concern over the government's what they opined dubious move , saying that so far the government has not taken any visible step to work out on the election process despite the fact that there is only one and half month left for the elections. The Assembly members belonging to Pakistan Muslim League-Q and PML-N are of the view that PPP government is planning to bring its own members and from its own government in NAs through such haste and uncertain decisions.
They further opined that first the proposed Constitutional packaged be announced and then the people of the area must be given appropriate time for election campaign.
Mirza Hussain, an Assembly member, who was the Finance Advisor in the previous cabinet, expressed his reservation over the way the PPP government is tackling the situation. He said that the government is not itself clear as to what is going to be done as far as the fate of the area is concerned. Meanwhile, sources said that the Kana division would present the Constitutional package to the federal cabinet most likely in the upcoming federal cabinet meeting for its formal approval.