ISLAMABAD: The schedule for the remaining 27 National Assembly seats will be announced next week, all the pending elections to the National Assembly seats will be held in March.
Polling for these seats will be held in the last week of March. Along with this, all the seats left vacant by the resignations of PTI members will be filled through by-elections.
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has announced the schedule of elections for the first 33 seats and also shared its plan for 31 more seats. There will be no election from April till the completion of the term of the National Assembly in the third week of August this year.
ECP sources told JEE News that the electoral body has intensified its efforts to prepare for the general elections to be held in October/November this year. Sources say that the ECP has nothing to do with the date of polling for the provincial assemblies on the dissolution of the present government. The Commission may suggest certain dates in this regard but it is not binding on the Provincial Governors, who are the sole arbiters for fixing the date.
Sources say that the commission will be ready to conduct elections to the dissolved provincial assemblies, but some technical and constitutional requirements will have to be taken into account before taking a decision.
The ECP, in its full house meeting, decided to hold a series of consultations and deliberations on the upcoming elections and the subsequent general elections. The commission has called a high-level meeting on Tuesday (February 7) in which chief secretaries of Punjab and KPK and police IGs will attend. On this occasion, they will brief the commission on the provincial assembly elections, the by-elections of the National Assembly, the law and order situation and other issues in their respective jurisdictions.
Another meeting of the ECP on this issue will be held on February 9 (Thursday). Sources said that all stakeholders and political parties including PTI and Muslim League (Q) have been invited to the meeting.
Sources said that all aspects of peaceful elections of provincial assemblies, code of conduct and other constitutional and legal issues will be discussed and opinions will be taken from them to ensure transparent elections.
ECP Secretary Umar Hameed Khan, while briefing the commission, gave the details of the arrangements for the elections of the Provincial Assemblies of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the by-elections of 86 constituencies of the National Assembly.
He told the meeting that the registrars of Lahore High Court and Peshawar High Court have been asked to provide the services of judicial officers for the upcoming elections. The by-elections for 31 constituencies of the National Assembly will be held on March 19. Earlier, it was announced that the elections for 33 seats of the National Assembly would be held on March 16.
