LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday set aside holding of reserved seats’ election of the local government in Punjab on the basis of old schedule and directed the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to issue a fresh schedule.

Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah passed this order allowing a petition by the PML-Q challenging elections for reserved seats of the local governments on the basis of old schedule.

Advocate Mobeen Qazi, party’s counsel, argued that the provincial government withdrew amendments previously made in the local government law and cases against the amendments were disposed of by the court.

He said after the decision of the case, the elections were to be held as per the law prevalent on August 26, 2015 however, the election commission instead of issuing fresh election schedule only announced the date of the polling that is September 1.

Directs ECP to issue fresh schedule

He said the ECP had earlier announced schedule by adopting the amendments in law on the basis of enhanced number of seats, which amendment had been withdrawn and same schedule could not be used for reduced number of seats.

The lawyer argued that under the old schedule the filing of nomination papers was to commence from January 20, 2016 on which date the law was again amended and the mode of filling up the reserved seats was changed from indirect elections to proportional representation system as per the political parties list.

Advocate Qazi stated that a large number of candidates, especially the candidates of political parties, were being deprived of their valuable rights to contest the election of the reserved seats due to inefficiency of the ECP.

The ECP, through its counsel, argued that the holding of elections on the basis of old schedule would not affect the election process. He said there was no need to issue a fresh schedule. The commission’s counsel asked the court to dismiss the petition for being baseless.

The chief justice, however, allowed the petition and directed the ECP to issue a new schedule for the election on reserved seats.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2016