The deadlock over a constitutional amendment on delimitation appears to have ended as Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Friday reportedly accepted the PPP's demand for a third-party audit of five per cent of the census blocks in Sindh.
The PPP was of the
view that if the "faulty" methodology used in the census were to be
repeated in the post enumeration survey (PES) of the selected blocks by
the same organisation which had carried out the census, the results
would once again become controversial.
In a meeting
attended by PPP Senator Aitzaz Ahsan, Leader of the House in Senate Raja
Zafarul Haq, Taj Haider, Mushahid Hussain Syed, Ilyas Bilour and
others, PM Abbasi conceded to the demand. It was also decided to form a
committee comprising Senators Taj Haider, Mushahid Hussain Syed, Hasil
Bizenjo and Mushahidullah Khan to oversee the process.
It was subsequently decided that the constitutional amendment would be tabled in Senate on December 19.
"All political parties want elections to be held on time," Senator Ahsan said after the meeting.
There
is a consensus among political parties that for the purposes of the
next general elections and by-polls, the allocation of National Assembly
seats should be made on the basis of provisional results of the census
without changing the existing total number of general seats (272) and
women’s seats (60) and retaining the the current share of Fata (12).
According
to the proposed reallocation, the seats will increase for Balochistan
(2 general seats + 1 woman seat), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (4+1) and the
federal capital (1+0), but these increases will be adjusted with the
seats for Punjab (-7 and -2). The seats for Sindh will remain the same.
The Council of Common Interests (CCI) had at a meeting on Nov 13
approved the publication of provisional results of the census. The CCI
had also decided initially that a third-party validation would be
carried out in 1pc census blocks. The proportion of census blocks where
the re-verification exercise was to be carried out was changed to 5pc on
the MQM’s demand when the bill was passed by the National Assembly.
