ISLAMABAD: The much-anticipated general election this year is likely to be held on the basis of the delimitation exercise that was conducted and officially published in August last year, The News reported Sunday.
The post-enumeration survey is scheduled to start on July 8 with the government's plans to present a report to the Council of Common Interests (CCI) by July 31.
The country's first-ever digital census began in March this year; however, there is uncertainty about its official date of publishing, pending completion of formalities.
While the exact date of the elections remains unknown, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People's Party (PPP) — Pakistan's two major parties in the ruling coalition — have initiated strategies for seat adjustments in the upcoming elections.
“Frankly, there has been no threadbare deliberations in recent weeks hitherto with regard to the next general election, but the officially stated positions remain unchanged that the nation will go to polls in October,” a federal minister, who wished not to be quoted, said when The News reached out to him to comment on the matter.
The coalition government, he emphasised, would not commit any constitutional violation in relation to the nationwide exercise, and it would be happy even if elections are conducted as per the delimitation, held last time.
However, some other cabinet members said in their statements that the general election would be held on the basis of fresh delimitation, following the completion of the related process, and indeed, in that case, the elections would face a delay.
When contacted, a senior official of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) hardly saw any chance of elections being held on time, i.e. in the first week of October and before the 12th of that month, if those were to be held on the basis of demarcation of the constituencies as per the digital census.
“The delimitation exercise needs four months, and even if the time is squeezed to a minimum of three months, even then, chances of elections conducted on the basis of fresh delimitation are very slim,” he maintained and added there are great chances the last year’s delimitation would be followed,” he added.
The ECP official pointed out that under Article 51(5) of the Constitution and Section 17 (2) of the Elections Act, 2017, the final published data was required for the purpose of delimitation of constituencies, and the commission was bound to start delimiting constituencies after the census result was officially published.
Seats in the National Assembly are allocated to each province and federal territory on the basis of the population under Article-51(3) of the Constitution in accordance with the last census, officially published.
However, he argued that a constitutional amendment would have to be made following the official publication of census results, being now technically impossible after the acceptance of the resignations of PTI legislators.
Therefore, in the given circumstances and as things appear, he added, the commission would be left with no other option but to conduct the upcoming general election on the basis of the last delimitation.