Election to 16 tribal seats of KP Assembly to be postponed

ISLAMABAD: The scheduled July 2 elections in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) will be postponed as parliament is set to change the number of federal and provincial seats from the region.

The 26th constitutional amendment sponsored by independent MP Mohsin Dawar, elected from North Waziristan, who is most prominent leader of the Pashtoon Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), as a private member’s bill is likely to be approved by the National Assembly on Monday as per the consensus reached among parliamentary players.

“If there is any increase or decrease in the number of seats of the KP assembly from the tribal region, the planned polls will be put off,” ECP spokesman Nadim Qasim told The News when contacted. He said that it was provided in Article 106 of the Constitution that the election to 16 seats of the KP assembly from the merged Fata will have to be organised within one year.

Nadim Qasim said that if parliament amended this article or any other constitutional provision, which affected the election schedule in any way, the polls will be deferred as the ECP is bound to follow the Constitution only. New delimitation of constituencies will be necessitated by any alteration in the number of seats for the KP assembly.

An intriguing scenario surrounded the quickly emerged support for the constitutional amendment, tabled by Mohsin Dawar. All of a sudden, it was introduced by him in the National Assembly to find the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) a willing supporter. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) also did not apparently take much time to back the bill after “directions” from its top leadership.

A rare development happened: a private member’s bill and that too a constitutional amendment proposal was owned by the ruling party and the opposition alike without any hesitation. When the bill was moved on Friday, both the government and opposition made joint efforts to unanimously pass it. However, it could not be approved as the opposition refused to vote for it without thorough debate and even sought some amendments to it. The tribal districts’ MPs hailed the treasury and opposition benches for their support and expressed confidence that the problems and hardships faced by the people of their areas will be addressed on a priority basis. The amendment seeks increase of seats of the tribal districts in the KP Assembly to 24 from 16, and those in the National Assembly to 12. The mover suggested to retain 12 seats of National Assembly which were reduced to six after the merger of Fata with KP and to raise general seats for KP Assembly from this belt from 16 to 24.

According to Dawar, the Standing Committee on Law and Justice approved the bill with amendments and proposed to increase KP assembly general seats from 16 to 20 and National Assembly seats from six to nine. Six days back, the ECP issued the election schedule for 16 KP assembly seats in the tribal districts. Polling will be held on July 2.

Candidates were asked to file their nomination papers with returning officers (RO) and May 18 is the last date for their scrutiny. May 22 has been set as the last date for filing appeals against the ROs decisions on the acceptance or rejection of candidacy papers.

Contestants can withdraw their papers by May 29, and a revised list of candidates will be published on the same day. On May 30, election symbols will be allotted to the aspirants. The polling will be held for PK 100 Bajaur-I, PK 101 Bajaur-II, PK 102 Bajaur-III, PK 103 Mohmand-I, PK 104 Mohmand-II, PK 105 Khyber-I, PK 106 Khyber-II, PK 107 Khyber-III, PK 108 Kurram-I, PK 109 Kurram-II, PK 110 Orakzai, PK 111 North Waziristan-I, PK 112 North Waziristan-II, PK 113 South Waziristan-I, PK 114 South Waziristan-II, PK 115 Ex-Frontier regions.

The ECP had determined and notified in January the share of tribal districts in the KP assembly seats. The decision was in line with Article 106 amended through the 25th Amendment in May last year and last-minute promulgation of an ordinance to avert disenfranchisement of scattered tribal regions.

The ordinance amended Section 20 of the Elections Act, 2017, inserting a new sub-section (2A) which reads: For the purpose of delimiting constituencies, for general seats of the KP assembly for tribal areas, two or more separate areas may be grouped into one constituency for their elections to be held in 2019 and by-polls related therein and thereafter this sub-section shall stand omitted.