The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has addressed concerns raised by the Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) regarding its preliminary delimitation report. The ECP clarified certain aspects of the report and dismissed FAFEN’s analysis as flawed.
The ECP explained that the modifications made in the report aimed to ensure balanced population representation. This involved merging some districts and reallocating seats for national and provincial assemblies across different districts.
In response to FAFEN’s concerns, the ECP clarified that seat allocation was based on population at the district level, not the provincial level as misunderstood by FAFEN. The criteria for these constituency changes were explained in the initial constituency report, which is in accordance with Section 20 of the Elections Act 2017.
The ECP further emphasized that recent amendments to the Elections Act 2017 removed the requirement to strictly adhere to current district boundaries in cases where population variance exceeds 10 percent. This amendment aims to promote more equitable elections.
Earlier, FAFEN expressed concern over the draft delimitation, noting that more than one-fifth of the constituencies exceed the 10 percent population variation limit. FAFEN argued that this undermines the principle of equal suffrage upheld by the Parliament through recent amendments in the Elections Act 2017.
According to FAFEN, the Election Commission was expected to disregard district boundaries to ensure that population variation among constituencies does not exceed 1 percent, as determined by the average population per seat of an assembly. The variation is calculated by comparing the population of a constituency with the quota per seat, which is based on the last published census data and the number of seats in the respective assembly.