ISLAMABAD: National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser on Monday approved Latif Yousafzai as a councillor for the government’s presidential reference for open balloting in the Senate elections in the Supreme Court.

The NA speaker nominated Senior Advocate Latif Yousafzai as the National Assembly Councillor.

Senior Advocate Latif Yousafzai will represent the National Assembly in the presidential reference for open ballot in the Senate election in the Supreme Court.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has also tabled a bill in the National Assembly on October 17, 2020 seeking to end the use of secret ballots in the Senate elections in order to bring greater transparency to the electoral exercise for the Upper House of the Parliament.

The government presented the bill – The Election (Amendment) Act, 2020 – which proposes a larger set of electoral reforms.

For holding the Senate elections through an open vote instead of the current method of secret ballot, the PTI government has proposed amendment in Section 122 of the Election Act 2017.

The bill also broadly covered the Senate elections, women and minorities reserved seats, delimitation of constituencies on the basis of enrolled voters instead of population, voting rights to overseas Pakistanis, and conditional participation of dual nationals in elections.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021