ISLAMABAD: The working group of the Parliamentary Committee on Delimitations on Monday continued with its work on drawing up recommendations regarding the constituency delimitation exercise recently conducted by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), which has, so far, refused to cooperate with the committee in this regard, by terming it a useless exercise and calling its proceedings “interference” in its “mandate”.

The members of the working group, headed by Privatisation Minister Daniyal Aziz, expressed reservations over the delimitation carried out by the ECP, however the officials representing the ECP did not respond to most of their objections.

Earlier, representatives of the Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen), an election monitoring body, gave a presentation before the committee highlighting a number of anomalies in the constituencies carved by the ECP on the basis of the provisional results of last year’s population census.

In its report, Fafen has claimed that the principle of equality of vote has been compromised in one-third (81) of the National Assembly constituencies as the variation in population size of the constituencies exceeds the ordinarily permissible legal limit of 10 per cent.

Fafen says principle of equality of vote has been compromised in 81 National Assembly constituencies

The report adds that of the 81 constituencies, 59 of them have a variation rate between 11pc and 20pc, 11 constituencies have a variation rate falling between 21pc and 30pc, six have a higher rate between 31pc and 40pc and five constituencies have an inordinately high variation rate – between 41pc and 50pc.

However, ECP officials refused to debate the Fafen report, simply pointing out that any objections to the delimitation of constituencies should be made by submitting formal complaints in accordance with laws at the appropriate forum. They said, while carrying out and studying the delimitation exercise, the ECP and Fafen had adopted different methodologies.

MNA Naeema Kishwar of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) protested against the ECP officials’ refusal to participate in the debate, and said that they (the lawmakers) would continue debating the issue and no one could stop them.

Another JUI-F member Aliya Kamran said that the maps of the proposed constituencies uploaded onto the ECP’s official website were also erroneous. She added that there were differences between the maps on the ECP’s website and those shared by the Survey of Pakistan.

Mr Aziz, the convener of the working group, said it was important for them to cooperate with each other to resolve the issues and problems regarding delimitation of the constituencies. He said there were several ambiguities, for example, there were three Provincial Assembly constituencies in one National Assembly constituency in Abbottabad, whereas there was only one Provincial Assembly seat in the other NA constituency in the same district. The minister alleged that perhaps that was done intentionally under the influence of some “powerful circles”.

“Do you have no answers to my questions?” Mr Aziz asked the ECP officials, adding that lawmakers had been, so far, unable to understand the reasons for such anomalies. The minister also passed a sarcastic remark that it looked like the ECP had asked a seventh grade student to draw up the maps.

The ECP officials, however, claimed that the maps they had used were given to them by chief secretaries of the provinces.

At this, Mehmood Khan Achakzai of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) quipped that perhaps Mr Aziz should take over the ECP on lease for a while.

Mr Achakzai said they only wanted to assist the ECP in removing anomalies and discrepancies in the delimitation process. He asked the Commission not to consider their recommendations as “interference” in their mandate.

Last week, the ECP informed the parliamentary working group that they were not bound to implement the recommendations of the committee as “the law does not provide any other mechanism except the filing of representations before the ECP” through public petitions. The ECP officials urged the parliamentarians to use the legal and constitutional course and file objections in the form of the petitions.

The committee members protested against this, but also decided to finalise their recommendations regardless, and send them to the Commission.

The ECP’s order said: “The Commission respects the Parliament and parliamentary committees but as the delimitation of constituencies is the sole mandate of the ECP under the Constitution and law, therefore, representations, if any, by aggrieved person can be filed in the manner provided under the law and rules, as the law and rules do not permit any other form of representations.”

“Therefore, it is expected that no interference in the mandate of the ECP will be made by any committee or any other institution,” the order said.

It is interesting to note that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), which had initially protested against the ECP’s response, later decided to support the Commission’s position and to stay away from the proceedings of the parliamentary committee.

There were no PTI members at the working group’s meeting on Monday. The absence of members of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was also conspicuous.

National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq had set up the eight-member committee on March 13 to examine draft proposals for delimitations as well as objections.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2018