PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Tuesday issued a notice to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in a writ petition of the Election Commission of Pakistan challenging amendments in submission of lists of women and minorities for the reserved seats in Local Government Conduct of Election Rules 2014. A two-member bench comprising of Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Qaisar Rashid Khan also put on notice the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Advocate General to assist the court in the law point raised by the Election Commission in the amendments made by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to the rules for Local Government elections under the KP Local Government Act 2014. During hearing of the petition, Zeeshan Munir Paracha, the counsel for the Election Commission, submitted that the provincial government had amended the word “exhaustive” with a word “insufficient” for the reserved women and minorities seats for tehsil, town and district councils of local government. He submitted that by changing the word in the act, the political parties would be able to change the submitted list for the reserved seats to the Election Commission and adopt the policy of pick and choose in the list. Earlier, he said there used to be an “exhaustive” list of the candidates for reserved seats and there was no change in the submitted list. However, he said the provincial government through amendments made it “insufficient” list of candidates that would enable the parties to delete or insert candidates from the submitted lists for the reserved seats.He submitted that the amendments in the rules were unlawful and unconstitutional and thus should be declared as void.
