The Election Commission of Pakistan has informed the Peshawar High Court that under the law, the schedule of general elections was to be announced at least 54 day ahead of the February 8 polling day, so it still had many days to do so.
The court has decided it to produce the election schedule after its formal announcement.
It is to be noted that, the above mentioned directions were issued by a bench, which consists of Justice Abdul Shakoor and Justice Syed Arshad Ali and during the hearing into a petition filed a few months ago against the delimitation of the nationwide constituencies by the ECP and its “step to delay” general elections.
The petition was filed by Lawyer Naeem Ahmad Khattak in August challenging the ECP notification for delimiting constituencies and seeking orders for protecting the election period specified by Article 224 of the Constitution.
The petitioner later filed an application in the main petition seeking the orders of the court for the Election Commission of Pakistan to announce the election schedule.
He also called for the contempt proceedings under Article 204 of the Constitution against Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja and four members of the commission for ‘violating’ the April 4 Supreme Court orders for conducting elections in Punjab on May 14, 2023.
Advocate Ali Azim Afridi appeared for the petitioner and insisted that the people at the helm of affairs, including the respondents, were responsible for organising and conducting elections honestly, fairly and in accordance with the law but they had been taking measures to delay them.
He said the National assembly was dissolved on Aug 10, 2023, and under the Constitution polls should have been held within 90 days of its dissolution.
The lawyer said that the ECP, by issuing a notification and a news release on Aug 17, had choreographed a systematic plan with systemic overtones allowing a delay in the holding of elections in the country at the cost of dispensing with mandatory constitutional provisions.
He contended that in the news release, based on the impugned notification, the respondents “shadowed legal obligation over constitutional dispensation.”
