ISLAMABAD: A meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) will be chaired today by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Monday to discuss the provisional results of the census conducted this year.
As per a notification circulated on Monday, Planning and Reforms Minister Ahsan Iqbal will be taking the seat of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in the CCI meeting as Dar continues to remain in London since the past two weeks in connection with medical treatment.
The meeting will be represented by the provincial chief ministers as well as selected members of the federal government.
The census results have been a bone of contention between Sindh and the federal government, with the former claiming that its population has been undercounted and the latter denying the claim. This has created a deadlock on the passage of the required legislation on the delimitation of new constituencies in accordance with the latest population count results.
Parliamentary parties, despite having met several times have failed to reach consensus on the issue of the new delimitation of constituencies for the National Assembly.
The ruling party in Sindh, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had demanded that the matter be taken up by the CCI.
Despite the deadlock, all political parties demand that the 2018 general elections be held on time.
In one of the earlier meetings, the parties had drawn consenses over keeping the total number of NA seats intact and changing the provincial quota of seats in line with the provisional census results.
By that formula, the seats in NA from Sindh and FATA were to remain the same, whereas those Punjab would decrease by nine, with Balochistan getting three more NA seats, Islamabad one and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa five.
The Election Commission of Pakistan needs the Parliament to pass the necessary legislation to implement this so that the next year’s elections are held as scheduled.
The meeting had been scheduled to take place at noon, but will now be taking place at 4 pm on Monday.
