ISLAMABAD: As the last date for filing objections to draft delimitation proposals expired on Tuesday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) warned against creating controversy over the entire exercise.

Talking to Dawn, a senior ECP official deplored the stance taken by Minister for Privatisation and convener of the working group of parliamentary committee on delimitation Daniyal Aziz and said: “The group at this stage has rejected the draft proposals as flawed and has called for inquiry into the objectives of what it called flawed delimitation, besides recommending holding of elections on the existing delimitation.”

But Mr Aziz appears to be on a solo flight as the acting secretary general of the PML-N and interior minister has through a tweet disowned the position taken by the former.

“It is clarified that PML-N has not approved any report on delimitation done by ECP. There is a process for filing of objections and hearings to address the complaints. By raising unnecessary controversy some elements are providing fuel for delaying polls,” Ahsan Iqbal tweeted.

PML-N disowns position taken by Daniyal Aziz against exercise

Sources in the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz also disclosed that the senior party leadership had contacted the ECP secretariat to convey that the harsh stance taken by Mr Aziz did not reflect the party position.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has already expressed reservations over the statement of the convener of the working group on delimitation demanding the holding of elections on older census.

“The PPP representation was missing on the day and we neither endorse nor agree with the statement of the convener of the group, Daniyal Aziz,” said the party’s spokesperson Dr Nafisa Shah.

She said that after the passage of the constitutional amendment unanimously by both houses of parliament, it was incomprehensible why the PML-N wanted to backtrack on an agreed formula for timely elections. “It seems that PML-N wants to delay the elections which we cannot agree on.”

Ms Shah said the way the committee affairs were handled from the start seemed to be aggressive and confrontationist.

“The right forum for appeals is the Election Commission and where violations of Section 20 of the Elections Act are observed the right forum is the Supreme Court,” she added.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is also not attending the working group’s meetings, while members of the group belonging to different political parties also disagreed with the stance taken by Daniyal Aziz.

The privatisation minister was not available for comments despite repeated attempts.

An ECP official said the number of representations had reached 1,286 on the last day for filing the same — 706 from Punjab, 284 from Sindh, 192 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 104 from Balochistan.

He said the hearing of these representations would start on Wednesday (today) in a transparent manner, adding that digital maps of all constituencies would be on display on multimedia screens.

The official said the commission would not succumb to any political pressure and would entertain only the objections where violation of principles laid down in Section 20 of the Elections Act was proved.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2018