ECP rejects concerns raised by FAFEN over preliminary delimitation

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in a bid to address concerns raised by the monitoring group Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen), on Monday clarified key aspects of its preliminary delimitations report.

The electoral watchdog in an issued statement emphasised that Fafen’s analysis of the initial constituencies was flawed and based on a misunderstanding of the criteria used for seat distribution.

These modifications involved merging several districts to achieve balanced population representation and reallocating the number of seats for both national and provincial assemblies across different districts.

In response to Fafen’s concerns, the ECP clarified that it had allocated 266 National Assembly seats to provinces based on population.

However, Fafen’s misunderstanding incorrectly treated provinces, not districts, as the unit for seat allocation, causing confusion. Section 20 of the Elections Act 2017 covers constituency rules, and the rationale for constituency changes was explained in the initial constituency report.

The election commission emphasized that recent amendments to the Elections Act 2017, including a new provision in Section 20(3), no longer require the ECP to “strictly adhere” to current district boundaries when such adherence would result in a population variance exceeding 10 per cent, aiming for more equitable elections.

Earlier, the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) expressed concern over the draft delimitation prepared by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), noting that more than one-fifth of constituencies exceed the 10 per cent population variation.

In a statement, the FAFEN said as many as 180 constituencies of national and provincial assemblies as proposed by the ECP do not meet the legal preferability of 10pc variation in population.

According to the watchdog, the move “undermines the principle of equal suffrage that was otherwise upheld by the Parliament through latest amendments in the Elections Act, 2017”.

According to the amendments enacted on August 4, 2023, after parliamentary approval, the Election Commission was expected to disregard district boundaries to ensure that the variation among the population of an assembly’s constituencies does not ordinarily exceed 1opc, FAFEN noted.

The watchdog said the variation among the population of constituencies may be identified by comparing the population of a constituency with the average population per seat of an assembly, also called quota per seat.

The quota is calculated by dividing the population of a province, as determined by the last census officially published, by the number of seats of that province in national or provincial assemblies, as provided in the Constitution.