Ministers expect delay in elections due to ‘constitutional requirements’

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and Defence Minister Khawaja Asif both stated the upcoming general elections – scheduled for October or November this year – could be postponed due to “constitutional requirements.”

The ministers made these statements in two separate TV shows.

Speaking on Geo News programme ‘Geo Pakistan’ on Tuesday morning, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah claimed that general elections would not be held in 2023.

When asked if 2023 was the elections’ year, the minister said, “It is an absolutely straightforward answer — no.”

When one of the hosts commented that the upcoming caretaker setup had “acquired an unconventional significance as the one to get the role might stay for more than three months”, Sanaullah insisted that “nothing was extraordinary.”

He reiterated that under the Constitution, another general elections could not be held on the 2017 census results as they had been accepted “provisionally for a single time”.

Emphasising that it was required by the Constitution to carry out the delimitation process after a census was notified, Sanaullah said, “The caretaker government, while fulfilling this constitutional requirement, will carry out the delimitation process.”

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif made similar revelations in an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson that was aired on Monday night.

“Ninety days in the deadline. One cannot go beyond 90 days. But under some conditions, the election commission has the power to delay it, because of some election, census, or electoral problem, for a month or two but not beyond that,” he said.

When asked whether the approval of the 2023 census would result in an election delay, Asif said, “I cannot speculate at the moment, but it is a possibility. I won’t rule that out.”

Anderson then pointed out that the approval of the census came the same day that PTI chief Imran Khan was arrested in a graft case and wondered if the two developments were connected.

“No, they’re not at all connected. The census controversy was going on for the last many, many months. And we had to create a consensus between all the provinces of Pakistan so that the results are accepted by all the provinces,” Asif said.

“The delay was because of this controversy, Otherwise, the result of the census has absolutely no connection with Imran Khan’s conviction,” he said.

At the end of the interview, Asif reiterated that elections would be held in November. “I do believe that the elections will be held in November. But you asked me if there is a possibility of delay: there is a possibility of a delay, but not more than a couple of months on technical grounds, and no ulterior motive in that,” he said.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif publicly announced that the National Assembly would be dissolved on August 9, following which the elections should be held within 90 days of the end of the assemblies’ tenure.

He also said the elections would be held based on the latest census. Although some of the ruling allies, including the Pakistan People’s Party, had opposed holding the polls under the fresh census, the Council of Common Interest (CII) on Saturday approved the results of the 2023 digital census.

A day after the CCI approved the digital census, making it almost sure that general elections may not be held this year due to the compulsory need for fresh delimitations, the federal government shifted the responsibility of conducting polls to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) within the next three months.

The ECP had in the recent past declared that conducting polls on fresh delimitation was not possible and that the exercise would require four to six months.

The commission will decide the time frame for fresh delimitation of constituencies later today.