ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is set to make another request to the National Judicial Policy Making Committee (NJPMC) for sparing judicial officers to perform duties as district returning officers (DROs) and returning officers (ROs) for the 2018 general elections.

Informed sources told Dawn on Thursday that during an interaction between Chief Election Commissioner retired Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza and the field staff of the ECP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including the district and regional election commissioners, it was suggested that DROs and ROs should be drawn from the judiciary.

The sources said that the ECP field staff was unanimous in its demand, with all of them with the opinion that even if it was not possible to spare judicial officers for the appointment of ROs, the DROs must be district and session judges as the administrative officers had a history of behaving like personal employees of influential politicians.

A senior ECP official said that the CEC agreed to make a request at an appropriate time to the Chief Justice of Pakistan who also heads the National Judicial Policy Making Committee (NJPMC) to approve the appointment of judicial officers to act as DROs and ROs during the next general polls.

The NJPMC, in its judicial policy of 2009, had decided to stop judicial officers from performing election duties as this had dragged the judiciary into political controversies.

A request to get assistance of judicial officers for 2013 elections had been dismissed by the Committee during the days of retired Justice Hamid Ali Mirza as the CEC, but a similar attempt made by his successor retired Justice Fakharuddin G. Ebrahim in November 2012 finally succeeded and the NJPMC agreed to a one-time lifting of the bar on judiciary’s involvement in the election process.

The committee which met with the then chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in the chair had decided to provide services of an adequate number of judicial officers to the EC for their appointment as district returning officers and returning officers.

The committee observed that since the administration of justice was the prime responsibility of the judiciary, judicial officers appointed as returning officers should do their routine judicial work and perform election duties in extra hours in the morning and evening so that litigants did not suffer.

In his introductory remarks, the chief justice said that in the past involvement of judiciary in the election process had adversely affected the judicial work. Therefore, at the time of framing the National Judicial Policy, it was decided to keep the judiciary away from the election process and focus all energies and time on administration of justice.

In a related development, an alliance of over 40 NGOs has said the commission’s request to the judiciary to supervise the coming general election is contrary to the constitution and election laws. The Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) urged the NJPMC to honour its 2009 decision that judiciary would not get involved in the election process.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2017