General elections due in last week of July

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is bound to hold general elections within 60 days after the end of term of the national assembly or within 90 days after the government dissolves the assembly, according to Article 224 of the constitution. The natural end of term of the current assemblies is 31 May which would imply elections must be held by the last week of July and in the event that the government dissolves the assemblies on 30 May elections must be held by the last week of August.
PML-N Senator Lieutenant General Abdul Qayum (retd) told Business Recorder that the prime minister would never request the President for early dissolution of the National Assembly as this would bring a bad name to the party. "The National Assembly will complete its five-year term and general elections will be held within 60 days as defined in the constitution," he said, adding the constitution was supreme and the PML-N being a democratic party could not even think of early dissolution of the assembly.
"The assemblies are dissolved by dictators and this is the essence of democracy that power will be transferred from an elected government to another through elections," he said. Qayum said that a democratically-elected government was going to complete its full term for the second time in history of the country and that would help strengthen the teething democracy in the country.
Kanwar Dilshad, former secretary ECP, told Business Recorder that there was no justification for extension of the caretaker setup nor does the constitution allow it under any circumstances. "Sixty days are enough for the election commission to make necessary arrangements to hold free and fair elections in the country," he said, though he acknowledged that at present there was considerable uncertainty generated by serious concerns over the accuracy of the census and the subsequent delimitation exercise. He however added that it was the responsibility of the election commission to quell all concerns.
An election commission official told Business Recorder that ECP was working round the clock to dispose of all the objections filed by political parties and general public on the recently demarcated delimitations of constituencies. He said the election commission would finalise the delimitation process by May 3 and issue a final notification in that regard on May 5.
The official said the commission would announce a schedule for the general elections within a week of installation of the caretaker governments in the centre and the provinces. To a question about gerrymandering, he said that allegations leveled by some politicians were 'baseless' as the entire delimitation exercise was being carried out under the Delimitations Act passed by Parliament.