ISLAMABAD: A Senate committee on Monday approved an increase in the number of seats for the Balochistan Assembly and the province’s seats in the National Assembly and opposed a move to give the role to any other institution in the appointment of members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) other than parliament.

The committee gave the approval at a meeting chaired by Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) Senator Mohammad Javed Abbasi.

A bill titled, “The Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2019 (Amendment of Article 51 and 106)”, tabled by around 20 senators, suggested that seats of the province in the National Assembly and seats of Balochistan Assembly should be increased.

The members of the committee were of the view that the amendment to Article 51 related to changes in the composition of the National Assembly that would involve changes with other provincial representation as well and is also conditional with publication of census results.

However, the amendment to Article 106, calling for increasing seats of the Balochistan Assembly from 65 to 80, was approved by the committee. The committee members stressed the need for working on how to reallocate the seats. The committee recommended that the increase in seats should be done according to the same formula as is currently in place at the ECP.

Independent Senator Sajjad Hussain Turi, one of the movers of the bill who was present in the meeting, later told Dawn that Balochistan covered almost 43 per cent of the area of the country.

“Some of the districts of Balochistan are spread over 50,000 square kilometres and the area of some districts is almost equal to the total size of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Candidates cannot cover their constituencies during election campaigns as it takes almost 200 kilometres to travel from start to end of the constituency. MPAs cannot ensure proper development in their constituencies. So it is suggested to decrease the area of constituencies,” he said.

Replying to a question, Mr Turi said that the bill would be sent to the upper house of parliament for voting and once it was passed, the bill would be sent to the National Assembly for consideration.

While discussing another bill titled, “The Constitution (Amend­ment) Bill, 2018 (Amendment of Article 213 and 215)”, the committee members agreed that the process of appointment of members of the ECP should be completed before the retirement of existing members.

The bill moved by PML-N Senator retired Lt Gen Abdul Qayyum calls for referring the matter of appointment of the chief election commissioner to the Supreme Court in case the parliamentary committee is unable to finalise any name (Article 213). Moreover, it suggested that the new member of the ECP should be appointed before the retirement of the existing member (Article 215).

The committee did not approve bringing another body into decisions that have to be done by parliament and suggested that a mechanism should come from within parliament. The amendment to Article 215 was agreed to in principle. The committee will further deliberate on the bill in its next meeting.

Senator Qayyum, while talking to Dawn, said that unfortunately the ECP remained dysfunctional for almost one year because the prime minister and the opposition leader could not reach a consensus on nomination of members from Sindh and Balochistan.

Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2020