The Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) has revealed that over one-fifth of the constituencies surpassed the 10% population variation, as suggested by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in its draft delimitation. This undermines the principle of equal suffrage, as endorsed by Parliament through recent amendments to the Elections Act, of 2017.
According to Fafen, the proposed 180 constituencies for national and provincial assemblies do not meet the legally desirable 10% population variation. These amendments, enacted in August 2023, expected the Election Commission to disregard district boundaries to ensure population variation within constituencies does not exceed 10%. The Fafen determines this variation by comparing the constituency population to the average population per assembly seat, also known as the quota per seat.
Fafen explained that the quota is calculated by dividing a province’s population, as per the last officially published census, by the number of its seats in national or provincial assemblies, as per the Constitution. For the National Assembly and provincial assembly constituencies, quotas were specified for various regions, such as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Islamabad Capital Territory, Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan.
Lack of Emphasis from the parliament
The preliminary report on delimitation in 2023 revealed that parliament did not widely use the emphasis on minimizing population variation to ensure vote equality in assembly constituencies.
The recent law change applied in delimiting only a few constituencies, resulting in 180 constituencies (83 National Assembly and 97 Provincial Assembly seats) having over 10% population variation in the 2023 draft lists, compared to 170 (82 National Assembly and 88 Provincial Assembly seats) in the 2022 delimitation. This means more than one-fifth of the demarcated constituencies did not comply with Section 20(3) of the Elections Act, 2017, according to Fafen.
The constituencies with over 10% population variation included 35 in Punjab, 22 in Sindh, 21 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and five in Balochistan for National Assembly seats. For Provincial Assembly seats, there were 30 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 26 in Punjab, 25 in Balochistan, and 16 in Sindh.
Fafen believes that the issue of population inequality persisted because the ECP did not update Rules 10(4) and 10(5) of the Election Rules, 2017, to reflect the spirit of Section 20(3) provided by the recent amendment. The NGO also pointed out disparities in constituency populations, with some being significantly larger than others.
To address these issues, Fafen urged the ECP to improve the accessibility of the process for filing representations on the draft constituencies. Currently, voters have to travel to Islamabad to submit and attend hearings at the ECP Secretariat, incurring additional costs and effort. Fafen proposed that voters could submit representations at district, regional, and provincial ECP offices, with hearings conducted at the provincial level. Additionally, Fafen called on the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics to promptly publish census block-wise population data on its website, as voters would require this information for filing representations.
