ISLAMABAD -The delimitation process of constituencies for next general elections formally began on Tuesday with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) asking for relevant data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics and provincial governments.
The ECP has directed authorities to submit maps of districts and tehsils, notifications of circles and blocks, census charges of metropolitan corporations, town and municipal committees in soft copies.
The Election regulator has set a deadline of January 5 for the submission of data regarding changes in census blocks.
The documents pertaining to the delimitation of constituencies will be compiled by January 10 whereas draft proposals of delimitations will be forwarded to the ECP from January 15 to February 28.
Objections to proposals will be received from March 5 to April 3 and will be resolved from April 4 to May 3.
According to the delimitation bill, that sailed through Senate last Tuesday nine NA seats (seven general and two women seats) from Punjab would be decreased, whereas five NA seats (four general and one women seat ) from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, three NA seats (two general and one women seat) from Balochistan and one NA seat from Islamabad would be increased.
The number of National Assembly seats for Sindh and FATA will remain intact.
The bill seeks to carry out fresh delimitation of constituencies on the basis of officially published census results which estimated the population of the country to be around 207 million.
It sought the delimitation for the general elections 2018 on the basis of the provisional results of the 6th Population and Housing Census 2017.
