NAVEED BUTT

ISLAMABAD: The parliamentary committee meeting on the proposed constitutional amendment for delimitation of constituencies in the country ended without developing any consensus on Tuesday.

According to sources, a deadlock still persists between the government and the opposition parties, including Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), over ‘The Constitutional (Amendment) Bill, 2017’ due to preliminary census results.

The parliamentary committee meeting met with Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq in the chair here at Parliament House to sort out the issue of delimitation of constituencies but failed to reach any conclusion in this regard. The parliamentary leaders of all political parties participated in the meeting. Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid briefed the leaders of parliamentary parties about the issues related to delimitation of constituencies.

The sources said the MQM-P remained dissatisfied over the briefings of Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on the provisional census results. The ECP said it needs the Parliament to pass a necessary legislation in line with the latest census, if next year’s elections are to be held on time.

However, all political parties have agreed that general elections should be held on time during the next year.

After the meeting, MQM-P Parliamentary Leader Dr Farooq Sattar said that his party does not accept the census results. “We have reservations regarding the census and how can we accept its provisional results?” he questioned. He said that population of Karachi city was decreased by 10.5 million according to provisional census results. He proposed that delimitation should be conducted on the basis of the number of voters instead of the population figures.

Syed Naveed Qamar of PPP said that his party still stands by its demand to get the approval of constitutional amendment bill from the Council of Common Interests (CCI) before tabling it before the National Assembly.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi said media the PML-N has failed to complete its numbers in the Lower House of the Parliament for passage of the bill. He said that the government should remove the reservations of PPP and MQM-P about the results of population census.

Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed said that there are two groups in the PML-N. He said if the issue of constitutional amendment regarding to delimitations is not resolved by the political partiers, the Supreme Court will have to decide about it.

National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq said, “All political parties have agreed that elections should not be delayed.”

He said the parliamentary leaders would now discuss the matter with their party heads and meet again on Wednesday (today) at 11:00am after receiving directions from their leaders.