Members of executive likely to supervise general elections

LAHORE: To conduct the coming elections, returning and district returning officers are likely to come from the executive. The development follows a lack of response from the judiciary despite several ECP communications.

In this context, the S&GAD Punjab and its services wing have started compiling lists of 300 BPS 17 to BPS-20 officers, the sources said. The S&GAD list excludes those officers serving with respective Chief Minister Secretariat, Governor’s House and administrative positions.

According to sources, the Election Commission of Pakistan had written to the chief justices of Lahore and Peshawar High courts on April 30 to nominate judicial staff as returning and district returning officers (ROs, DROs) for supervising provincial elections in Punjab and KP. But the commission did not get any response.

If the commission, they said, does not get any reply in the next two to three days, the lists of executives will be sent to the ECP for deputing them as ROs for holding elections on 297 Punjab Assembly seats and 141 National Assembly seats. Besides, the executive officers will also be tasked as district returning officers in 42 districts of Punjab. Later, after their scrutiny, the ECP will depute them.

When former secretary ECP and Punjab CM’s Adviser on Law and Parliamentary Affairs Kanwar Dilshad was contacted, he said that Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan Raja had written several times to the chief justices but he was informed that “judicial officers are engaged”. The ECP is still waiting for a reply from the judiciary, he said and added if the commission does not get any response, it will depute executives as returning and district returning officers. Dilshad said the posting of executives for supervising elections is not a new phenomenon. They conducted elections from 1977 to 1985. It changed after the former premier Benazir Bhutto and former president Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari demanded the-then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan to depute returning and district returning officers from the judiciary. Since 1988, elections were held under the supervision of the judiciary.