PESHAWAR: Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP) has opposed the recent delimitation decision taken by Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and demanded restoration of the six national assembly seats of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The PkMAP provincial president Dr Mohammad Ali in a statement here on Sunday said that the number of NA seats was reduced in the province as result of the fresh census data of 2023.

The ECP’s announcement unveiled a notable shift in the parliamentary landscape, diminishing the National Assembly’s strength to 336, with a decrease of six seats, specifically impacting the representation of newly-merged districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

In 2018, the integration of the former Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) with KP was accompanied by the allocation of 12 National Assembly seats. However, in this latest development, the count has been reduced to six,” he said.

Furthermore, he said that the PKMAP casts doubt on the authenticity of the 2023 census, labelling it as spurious and asserting that the reported population figures fall significantly short of the actual numbers.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023