ISLAMABAD, Sept 29: The Election Commission (EC) has sent out letters to the Secretaries of the two houses of the Parliament and the four Provincial Assemblies seeking fresh declarations from the lawmakers in the respective houses, affirming that they are not holding foreign nationalities.
Informed sources told Dawn on Saturday that a timeframe of two weeks had been set for the respective secretariats for sending their replies to the EC.
A senior official of the EC said that this time it would not be possible for the concerned secretariats to ignore the letter having the force of a Supreme Court order behind it.
He said all the lawmakers were required to attest their affidavits before the respective secretaries affirming that they were not holding a dual nationality. He said the draft of the affidavit had also been sent with the letter The EC had earlier written letters to the secretaries of the Senate and the National Assembly as well as Provincial Assemblies and Ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs and Overseas Pakistanis on August 29, seeking details of the dual nationality holding legislators within 15 days.
Each word of the interesting response from both the houses of the Parliament was all the same, showing that the draft was a collective effort. Both the houses said there was no provision under the rules of business to obtain such details from members of the Parliament.
Saying that they were not in possession of such record, they pointed out that the EC gets nomination papers and declarations from the candidates at the time of the elections and maintains the record after scrutiny.
They advised EC to directly seek the information from members. Balochistan Assembly also said it had no record of dual nationality holding lawmakers. Provincial assemblies of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa did not bother to respond to the EC letter. Ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs and Overseas Pakistanis also chose to ignore the letter. Punjab was the only province where the assembly secretariat was reported to have started the process of obtaining details from the members.
The 15 days time limit lapsed on September 13 and reminders were sent to the Senate and parliamentary secretariats, besides the three relevant ministries on September 14.
A full bench of the Apex Court headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in its short order in the dual nationality case had directed the EC to examine the cases of the Parliamentarians and the members of Provincial Assemblies, individually, by obtaining fresh declaration on oath from all of them that they are not disqualified under Article 63(1)(c) of the Constitution.—Iftikhar A. Khan