ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan informed the Supreme Court on Friday that it was ready to hold local government elections in both Punjab and Sindh on Sept 20 provided fast printing machines were made available to it.

ECP’s Additional Secretary Sher Afgan requested a three-judge bench headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja to order the authorities to provide two advanced printing machines to enable the commission to hold the elections in the two provinces on Sept 20 in accordance with the court’s directives.

The suggestion was made after the court had rejected the commission’s fourth revised schedule for the elections in Punjab and Sindh in three phases and ordered it to submit a fifth one for holding the polls on Sept 20.

The court had taken up the issue of implementation of its March 19, 2014, judgment which had vested the ECP with the authority of carrying out delimitation of wards and then holding the local bodies’ elections.

The court also ordered the commission to submit on March 10 a similar schedule for the Islamabad Capital Territory.

The court has already accepted the polling schedules for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and all 43 cantonment boards on May 30 and April 25, respectively.

On Thursday, the court’s attention was drawn to the lack of capacity of the Printing Corporation of Pakistan (PCP) to timely print the required number of ballot papers which would be in millions. The apex court was informed that the corporation was using the printing machines of 1951.

On Friday, Attorney General Salman Aslam Butt said he had discussed the matter with the PCP chairman who said the corporation was considering to outsource the printing of ballot papers.

The ECP secretary said the commission had reques­ted the cabinet division through numerous letters to allot a one acre plot so that it could set up its own printing press and a training centre for its staff because the PCP did not have the capacity to print ballot papers in such a huge number. The cabinet is yet to respond to the communications.

But the court regretted that the commission had been misguiding it at every step and recalled that a Pakistani in Milan (Italy) had offered to get the ballots printed in two days.

The court directed the ECP to submit the record of its communications with the cabinet division regarding the allotment of land. The attorney general was asked to personally talk to Chief Election Commissioner Sardar Raza Khan in this regard.

The court turned down a request by Deputy Attorney General Sajid Ilyas Bhatti to revise the election schedule for cantonment boards by changing it to May 2 from April 25 because the process of updating electoral rolls by including additional 300,000 to 500,000 voters would take a considerable time.

The court ordered the commission to hold the elections in KP and cantonment areas on the given dates.

The attorney general informed the court that a bill for conducting the elections in Islamabad Capital Territory had been approved by the cabinet. It will be placed before the National Assembly in the next session.

Meanwhile, ECP has asked the Sindh election commissioner to provide by March 10 the requisite information about the notified number of seats of union councils, union committees and wards in municipal committees and town committees.

Published in Dawn March 7th , 2015

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