Election regulator issues preliminary delimitation report as Pakistan heads toward polls

Voters cast their ballot at a polling station during the by-election for national assembly seats, in Karachi on October 16, 2022. (AFP/File)

• The Election Commission of Pakistan last week said it would hold polls in late January
• Pakistan’s National Assembly comprises 266 general seats, 60 reserved for women and 10 for non-Muslims

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s election regulator issued the preliminary delimitation report of constituencies on Wednesday, with the completion of the exercise bringing it closer to holding polls in January 2024 as it said last week.
In a notification released on Aug. 17, the ECP said the initial delimitation process would be completed on Oct. 7 and preliminary proposals for delimitation, along with the report, would be published on Oct. 9.
However, the ECP announced last week it would hold elections in the last week of January 2024 and would instead complete the delimitation process by Nov. 30, instead of Dec. 14 as originally stated.
Polls were supposed to take place within 90 days of the parliament’s dissolution, but the election regulator said it needed more time to redraw hundreds of federal and provincial constituencies following the latest population census approved by the previous government in August.
“The share of seats in the National Assembly and in the Provincial Assemblies in respect of each district has been worked out on the basis of the final results of the 7th Digital
population and Housing Census-2023, officially published on 7th August, 2023,” the ECP said in a notification and an accompanying report.
As per the report, a copy of which is available with Arab News, the National Assembly comprises 266 General Seats while 60 additional seats have been reserved for women, and 10 more for non-Muslims.
Of these seats, Punjab has been allocated the most with 141, followed by Sindh with 61, the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) with 45, southwestern Balochistan with 16, and the capital city of Islamabad has been allocated 3 seats.
Punjab has the most number of provincial seats as well at 371, followed by Sindh with 168, KP with 145, and Balochistan at 65.
Pakistan will head to the polls after over a year of intense political turmoil and economic meltdown. Business leaders in Pakistan have been urging authorities to bring political stability to the cash-strapped nation which has seen a record devaluation of the rupee and soaring inflation in the past year-and-a-half.