ISLAMABAD, Jan 12: The government will table a bill during the current session of the National Assembly to rectify a constitutional wrong which surfaced after the election of a number of people to parliament and provincial assemblies without meeting the criteria set in the 18th Amendment.

Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq informed a four-judge bench of the Supreme Court comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain, Justice Tariq Pervez and Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany that the government would move the bill in a couple of days.

The bill will authorise the chief election commissioner to hold by-elections recently conducted without constituting a four-member Election Commission -a mandatory requirement under the 18th Amendment.

The bench hearing the petitions filed by Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf chief Imran Khan and the late Benazir Bhutto against irregularities in the voters' list declined a request of the ECP to extend the Feb 23 deadline set by the court to complete the process of preparing fresh electoral rolls which also involves removing about 37 million invalid votes from the list.

'Realise your duty towards the nation; we are not extending the time,' the chief justice said while expressing dissatisfac-tion over the performance of the commission.

The Foreign Office assured the court that it would have no objection if overseas Pakistanis were given the right to cast their votes in the next general election.

A Nadra representative assured the court that the organisation would be able to produce a preliminary electoral roll by Feb 22.

ECP's joint secretary Sher Afgan said the commission could not match the performance because it had no compatible mechanism for the electronic list.

The chief justice censured the ECP for not carrying out the process of preparing the list in time. 'Free and fair elections mean to provide full opportunity to the nation which will lead to transparency,' he said, adding that the democratic system would be strengthened by holding free and fair elections while bogus electoral lists would derail democracy.

The court also took notice of extension in service given to ECP secretary Ishtiak Ahmed Khan after retirement and asked why he was on contract when the court had held that a service contract could be extended only in mandatory conditions, but it had now become a general practice to grant extension.

The court decided to constitute a special bench and reissued notices through secretaries of the Senate, National Assembly and provincial assemblies to alllegislators who were elected during byelections. They have been asked to appear in person before the court on Jan 19.

The chief justice asked the attorney general what would be the consequences if the Supreme Court declared that the elections were not held in accordance with the Constitution as envisaged under the 18th Amendment.

The attorney general said the members would deem to be as if not elected, but requested the court not to interfere in the matter because the issue had not been raised by the petitioners.

He said the court would intervene only if there was something against the spirit of the Constitution, but here there was not even an iota of doubt that the elections conducted by the ECP were not free and fair. He said people had sent their representatives to the respective houses.

'There is a difference between the executive actions and the legislative and the latter will always take its own course, he said. About the validity of by-elections, the attorney general said the matter was to be decided by a body properly constituted under the Constitution and no one else.

The chief justice said the present NA session had not been specifically called to pass the bill the government intended to move to adopt it through a two-third majority. Even the cabinet had conceded that the ECP had committed a mistake by holding the elections, he said.