ISLAMABAD: The delimitation process of constituencies for next general elections formally began on Tuesday as the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) summoned relevant data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics and provincial governments.
According to details, the ECP has directed authorities to submit maps of districts and tehsils, and notifications of circles and blocks in soft copies. Furthermore, census charges of metropolitan corporations, town and municipal committees have also been summoned.
The Election Commission of Pakistan has given a deadline of January 5 for the submission of data regarding changes in census blocks; documents pertaining to the delimitation of constituencies will be compiled by January 10.
Draft proposals of delimitations will be forwarded to the ECP from January 15 to February 28. Objections to proposals will be received from March 5 to April 3 and will be resolved from April 4 to May 3.
The bill, passed by the National Assembly (NA) on November 16, will decrease nine NA seats (seven general and two women seats) from Punjab , five NA seats (four general and one women seat ) from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, three NA seats (two general and one women seat) from Balochistan and one NA seat from Islamabad.
The number of NA seats for Sindh and FATA will remain the same.
The bill seeks to carry out fresh delimitation of constituencies on the basis of officially published census results.
It sought the delimitation for the general elections 2018 on the basis of the provisional results of the 6th Population and Housing Census 2017. The amendment sought in Article 51 (5) will allow to re-allocate seats as per provisional census results.
The existing Article 51 (5) requires that the “seats in the National Assembly shall be allocated to each Province, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Federal Capital on the basis of population in accordance with the last preceding census officially published”.
