The tussle over demarcating constituencies in Karachi poses threat to transparent elections
With elections being the catchphrase, and a general election expected in the next three months, there are a great many questions outstanding about how the elections themselves will pan out. Voters’ lists verification and the delimitation of constituencies in Karachi are the two big questions that stand out with the Supreme Court (SC) and the Election Commission (ECP) in an apparent standoff over the later.
The SC has clearly rejected the ECP’s plea to “defer” the re-drawing of constituencies in the ethnically polarised financial capital of the country. The SC issued orders to the ECP in October last year to redraw constituencies in Karachi by creating ethnically diverse zones. However, the ECP has continued to delay the matter. Its earlier contestation was that political parties had suggested the opposite: to create single ethnicity constituencies. The court had asked the ECP to “apply its own mind” on the matter while maintaining constituencies had to be on a “non-ethnic basis”.
The matter has continued to be delayed, dangerously it must be noted, as the ECP has taken the plea that “it cannot constitute new constituency limits in absence of a new census”. The SC has pointed to the powers that the ECP possesses under the Delimitation of Constituencies Act, 1974, which does not make a new census compulsory to undertake the endeavour. A written order by the SC states in clear words: “The ECP plea is not in accordance with the law as it does not seem interested in implementing the SC’s orders.”
Whatever the merits of the reasons the ECP is presenting, may be the ECP should have completed the task by now. The Chief Election Commissioner Fakharuddin G Ebrahim’s stance – on the one side promising “to take all decisions in accordance with the SC verdict”, and on the other side questioning “how the delimitation in Karachi could be done without a census” – is not reassuring.
With the ECP on the other side celebrating the first anniversary of the ‘world’s largest voters SMS service’, there are questions over whether the service has been worth the effort. Only about 15 million people have used the service to verify their votes against 70 million who have not. Has the service added to election transparency – or would a more thorough on the ground check have served better?
With ECP officials claiming that the verification of the 6.8 million voters in Karachi that started in January has been completed, the question is: why can the voters’ lists not be used to demarcate new constituency limits? With the ECP set to meet again to discuss the issue, it is hoped that better sense will prevail and the ECP will avoid an unnecessary standoff with the SC that could mar the next general elections.
