KARACHI, Oct 18: The Sindh government on Friday extended the deadline by another week for the completion of the first phase of fresh delimitation, which is aimed at defining constituencies and units for the upcoming local government elections, a senior official said.

He added the deadline was extended after taking into consideration the feedback from the municipal authorities and revenue officials who faced a few challenges while compiling data to complete the job within the given timeframe.

The provincial government had on Sept 25 assigned deputy commissioners the task of carrying out all the necessary formalities for the delimitation process and completing it within 14 days.

According to the decision made in the provincial cabinet meeting last month, the deputy commissioners had to receive objections or appeals from the public on the proposed redrawn boundaries within the next seven days. In the latter seven days, the deputy commissioners were supposed to address the objections and the appeals.

“Actually deputy commissioner and revenue officers are facing problems in several districts,” said Sindh Law Minister Dr Sikandar Mandhro while speaking to Dawn.

He added: “We have census record of 1998 but as the population has increased multiple times since then there is some ambiguity in several districts to ascertain the exact number of people living there. We have no authentic document to give certain number of representation in some districts.”

The Sindh government’s plan to carry out delimitation in the province before the local government elections has already drawn criticism from some political parties that saw the process ‘meaningless’ without the census — the argument raised by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement on delimitation of Karachi constituencies before the general elections 2013.

While there is no strong reaction from the MQM to the government plan for delimitation before the local government polls, the idea was opposed mainly by nationalist parties — Sindh Taraqqi-pasand Party, Sindh United Party, Qaumi Awami Tehrik — and the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional which is a partner in the PML-N government in the centre.

Despite the objections raised by the nationalist parties and the PML-F, the Sindh government is ‘focussed’ on the target to hold local bodies’ elections in line with the orders of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

The law minister said that the deadline had been extended by another week so that ‘authentic and credible’ data was compiled before moving on to other stages of the local government election process.

“Without a fresh census being carried out before the general elections in 2002 the number of Sindh Assembly seats was increased from 110 to 168,” said the law minister.

“The same was done with National Assembly and other provincial assemblies. Our idea is to take every possibility into account while carving out fresh constituencies for accuracy. As a result, you may see increase in the number of union councils in some towns or tehsils by the time the process is finished.”

Dr Mandhro said the Supreme Court had not fixed any date for the local bodies elections. He added that the Sindh government would be in a much better position for polls after the process of fresh delimitation.

“Dates and schedule of elections are fixed or announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan. But we would be able to meet any directives once the process of delimitation is done,” the minister added.