ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court said on Thursday it wondered why the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) considered itself subordinate to the cabinet division, but accepted its revised schedule for local government elections in the areas within the 43 cantonment boards and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with little adjustments.

“.. ECP considers itself subordinate to the cabinet division,” deplored Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja who was heading a three-judge bench which had taken up the contempt petition of Raja Rab Nawaz against the failure of successive governments to hold LG polls in the cantonment boards’ areas since 1998 and regarding implementation of the court’s March 19, 2014 judgment of empowering the ECP to carry out delimitation of wards and then hold the elections in the provinces.

The Supreme Court has been hearing the case since February 26 and even held proceedings on late Wednesday evening.

Three-phase schedule for Punjab and Sindh rejected

The court accepted the revised election schedule for the cantonment board areas issued by the commission with April 25 as the new poll date. The earlier date was May 16.

It directed the ECP to immediately begin the process of updating electoral rolls and include additional 300,000 to 500,000 new voters in the fresh list.

For KP, the commission agreed to hold LG elections on May 30, June 7 being the earlier proposed date, with the same condition that 1.2 million more voters would be included in the electoral rolls.

But the court rejected the schedule for holding LG polls in Punjab and Sindh in three phases starting from Sept 30, Nov 4 and Dec 9, as the earlier schedule did not envisage three-stage elections.

Appearing in the court on behalf of the commission’s secretary, ECP Deputy Director Irfan Kauser said the commission intended to hold elections in 12 districts of Punjab and two divisions of Sindh in three phases because it had to get over 400 million ballot papers printed and that the commission was obliged to get the papers printed by the Printing Corporation of Pakistan (PCP).

On the directives of the court, the commission submitted in the evening a detailed report suggesting how much time it actually needed to hold the elections in the two provinces. The bench will assemble again on Friday to consider the commission’s report.

During the hearing, the court again referred to Article 220 of the constitution which empowers the ECP to hold LG elections, and observed that commission had inordinately proposed remote dates. But the court was ready to consider any justification, if provided, for the dates in the revised schedule, it added.

Mr Kauser accepted that it was beyond the capacity of the PCP to print the ballot papers in a short time because it did not have efficient and advanced printing machines.

Currently the PCP is using printing machines of 1951.

When the court asked Mr Kauser to cite any law, rule or regulation which made it mandatory for the ECP to get the ballot papers printed by the PCP, the official was unable to mention any.

When asked when did the commission become aware of the limitation of the PCP, he said the ECP became aware of it during the process of printing of ballots for the May 2013 general elections.

The court noted that it was surprised by Mr Kauser’s admission that despite being aware of the limitation of the PCP, the commission had only sent letters to the establishment division pointing out the lack of capacity of the PCP and had requested the government to procure latest printing machines.

In a lighter vein, the court suggested that PCP’s machines should be dispatched to Germany -- the birthplace of printing machines – where it might be replaced with latest machines with the old ones being put on display in a museum.

The research staff of the Supreme Court provided a list of fast machines which had the capacity to print 100,000 copies in an hour.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2015

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