ISLAMABAD: National Assembly’s (NA) Special Committee on Delimitation of Constituencies unanimously elected Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi as the chairman.
The first meeting of the Special Committee on Delimitation of Constituencies was held at Parliament House on Wednesday.
While discussing agenda item number 3, pertaining to the issue of grievances and reservations of the lawmakers regarding recently carried out delimitation by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the committee expressed deep concern on the delimitation and constituted a nine-member working group under the leadership of Minister for Privatisation Daniyal Aziz. The group would make suggestions and proposals within three days to address the issue of new delimitation of constituencies which would be sent to ECP for resolution.
During the meeting, the committee discussed the issues, including clock wise delimitation, stark discrepancies while determining the boundaries of the constituencies on different criteria of population, issue of Sections 20/21 of The Elections Act, 2017, constitution of election tribunals for hearing appeals against the delimitation of constituencies and poor performance of ECP regarding the provision of maps of the constituencies to the general public.
The meeting was attended by Minister for State and Frontier Regions Lt Gen (r) Abdul Qadir Baloch, Minister for Privatisation Daniyal Aziz, Minister for Parliamentary Affaris Sheikh Aftab Ahmed, Minister for Law and Justice Mehmood Bashir Virk, Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance Miftah Ismail, Zahid Hamid, Syed Naveed Qamar, Dr Arif Alvi, Siraj Muhammad Khan, S A Iqbal Quadri, Naeema Kishwer Khan, Ayisa Nasir, Ghous Bux Khan Mahar, Sahibzada Tariq Ullah, Mehmood Khan Achakzai, Alhaj Shahji Gul Afridi, lawmakers and officers of the ECP, Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and Ministry of Statistics.
