Pakistan: EC rejects concerns raised by Free and Fair Election Network over preliminary delimitation

Islamabad [Pakistan], October 3 (ANI): The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has addressed concerns raised by the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) on the core aspects of its preliminary delimitation report, reported ARY News.

The ECP stressed that Fafen’s analysis of the initial constituencies was flawed and based on a misunderstanding of the criteria used for seat distribution, reported ARY News. 

In a statement, the ECP stated that these modifications involved merging several districts to achieve balanced population representation and reallocating the number of seats for both national and provincial assemblies across different districts, ARY News reported. 

However, in responding to Fafen’s comments, the ECP clarified that it had allocated 266 National Assembly seats to provinces based on population.

Fafen further created confusion by misunderstanding treating provinces, not districts as the unit for seat allocation. 

Moreover, Section 20 of the Elections Act 2017 covers constituency rules, and the rationale for constituency changes was explained in the initial constituency report.

According to ARY News, the electoral body highlighted that recent amendments made to the Elections Act 2017, including a new provision in Section 20(3), do not require the ECP to “strictly adhere” to current boundaries when such adherence would result in a population variance exceeding 10 per cent, aiming for more equitable elections.

Earlier, Fafen expressed concern over the draft delimitation prepared by the ECP.

They further noted that over one-fifth of constituencies exceed the 10 per cent population variation. 

Fafen further in a statement stated that as many as 180 national and provincial assembly constituencies as proposed by the ECP do not meet the legal preferability of 10 per cent variations in population, reported ARY News. 

The electoral commission said that the move “undermines the principle of equal suffrage that was otherwise upheld by the Parliament through the latest amendments in the Elections Act, 2017”.

However, according to the amendments enacted on August 4, the ECP after parliamentary approval, was likely to disregard district boundaries to ensure that the population variation of an assembly’s constituencies does not ordinarily exceed 10 per cent, Fafen stated. 

Moreover, the ECP on Wednesday released the provisional report on the delimitation of constituencies based on the recently concluded census, Dawn reported.

Under the original delimitation schedule issued by the ECP on August 17 — ten days after the notification of census results — the initial delimitation exercise was to be completed on October 7 and preliminary proposals for delimitation along with the report were to be published on October 9.

However, on September 1, the ECP had announced squeezing timelines of the delimitation exercise by 14 days to complete the process on Nov 30, instead of the scheduled Dec 1, Dawn reported.