ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Fawad Chaudhry announced on Thursday that the party has decided to challenge the Election Commission of Pakistan’s delimitation order, saying delimitations are possible only if a new census is conducted.

In a tweet, he said that creating new constituencies without a census would be a serious violation of the Constitution, adding the ECP is on a mission to make the election process controversial.

On April 11, the ECP had announced the delimitation schedule for the National and provincial Assemblies for the next general elections.

In a statement, the ECP announced that no new administrative unit will be formed anywhere in the country.

The chief secretaries and provincial election commissioners are directed to provide required maps and other documents for demarcation work. Documents will be provided from April 11 to 26. Training of delimitation committees will be conducted from April 20 to 24. Preliminary delimitations will be published on May 28.

The commission had decided to immediately start the delimitation exercise on the basis of the 2017 census and population statistics.

Keeping in view the current scenario of the country, the ECP decided not to wait for the digital census which is yet to be decided and proceed with the delimitation exercise.

Earlier on April 8, it was reported that the population census hit a snag after a government-run company expressed its inability to timely provide equipment for conducting door-to-door headcount digitally, serving the first blow to the official plans of making the seventh census politically acceptable to all.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022