Early elections? The ECP has to scale the delimitation mountain first

The political showdown that gripped the country last week had all institutions on edge. One such institution is the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) which has been pushed into a flurry of action in recent times. 

While moving out, the former government demanded early general elections to be conducted within a deadline of ninety days. The Supreme Court too called upon ECP to inquire about the possibility of early elections. 

ECP responded by pointing out that, ‘Since the merging of Ex-FATA into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, its (FATA’s) 12 seats have been reduced to 6 seats. Following their inclusion within the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the National Assembly’s constituencies went down from 272 to 266. In this situation, it is essential to initiate a new delimitation process.’ 

In simple terms, since the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were combined with the province of KP in 2018, the number of NA seats allocated to FATA were naturally reduced. In lieu of this, delimitation – the process by which the map of Pakistan is broken down into individual constituencies – has to be done afresh.