Delimitations of NA and PA constituencies challenged in SHC

The Sindh High Court on Thursday issued notices to the Election Commission of Pakistan, the delimitation commissioner and others on petitions against the preliminary delimitations of national and provincial assemblies’ constituencies in Shikarpur, Jamshoro and Khairpur.

Ibrahim Jatoi, Raza Mohammad Gorar and other petitioners had challenged the preliminary delimitations of national and provincial assemblies’ constituencies in the three districts of Sindh by the delimitation commissioner.

The petitioners’ counsel, Rasheed A Razvi and Syed Mureed Ali Shah, submitted that the preliminary delimitations of National Assembly constituencies NA-198 and NA-199, provincial assembly constituencies PS -7, 8 and 9 of Shikarpur, PS-80, 81 and 82 of Jamshoro and PS-32 of Khairpur were challenged before the election commission through representation contending that the delimitation commissioner had failed to follow the guidelines set in Section 20 of the Election Act in which principles of delimitations had been highlighted.

They submitted that it was clearly mentioned in the election laws that during the preparation of draft proposals for the delimitation of constituencies, the delimitation committee would follow the principles of delimitations and guidelines provided by the ECP from time to time.

They stated that petitioners had raised several grounds for the purpose of delimitation of their respective constituencies, but the same were rejected by the ECP without consideration and dismissed their representation.

They alleged that the delimitation of constituencies were made in favour of a particular group of candidates, and that negated the principle of law and fair and transparent elections. They requested the court to set aside the preliminary delimitations and direct the ECP to issue an preliminary delimitation notification while considering the objections and proposals of the petitioners in conformity with the election laws.

A division bench, headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar, after the preliminary hearing of the petitions, issued notices to the Election Commission of Pakistan, the delimitation commissioners and others and called their comments on May 17.

Missing persons

The Sindh High Court took exception to police and joint investigation teams’ performances and observed that JITs were doing nothing to recover missing persons.

Hearing petitions for the safe recovery of missing persons, the court observed that despite repeated directives, police officers had not been making any progress in the cases while the correspondence between the investigating officers and senior police officers took months, adding that JIT sessions were apparently not going beyond the photo session.

The home department’s focal person submitted that the provincial task force had held a session for discussing the cases of missing persons and directed the JIT heads and the IOs to put in extra efforts to track the detainees and also visit the prisons of Sindh in order to locate them.

The court directed police investigation officers to make serious efforts for the recovery of missing children and submit reports on June 6.

The directives came at a petition filed by a non-governmental organisation in 2012 regarding children who have gone missing from different parts of Karachi. The petitioner contended that police did not properly investigate these cases, which resulted in many avoidable deaths.

A police officer had earlier informed the court that police had recovered eight out of 19 children who disappeared from different parts of the city, and they were returned to their parents. He had said police would make every effort for recovery of the remaining missing children.

The court also directed federal and provincial law officers to file their progress reports on petitions against the detention of citizens allegedly by personnel of law enforcement agencies.

Bail dismissed

The Sindh High Court dismissed the bail application of a charged with raping a teenage girl.

Parvez was booked by police for raping the 14-year-old girl in the Joharabad area in August last year.

The police arrested him from the premises of the court when he tried to escape after the rejection of his application.