Judicial officials to supervise polls

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Friday said it had decided to seek the services of judicial officers as district returning officers and returning officers for the 2018 general election.

A statement issued by the commission said it had been decided to appoint district returning officers and returning officers from the lower judiciary for which letters had been written to the registrars of respective high courts.

The commission explained that the letters were written under clauses 50 and 51 (1 and 1C) of Elections Act, 2017. The lists of officers including district and sessions judges, additional sessions judges, senior civil judges and civil judges have been sought from the high courts. Now there will be a separate returning officer for every National Assembly (272 constituencies) and each constituency of the four provincial assemblies (577 constituencies).

The Elections Act, 2017 provides three options to the Election Commission: 1) It can hire services of the lower judiciary; 2, It can seek the services of bureaucrats; 3), It can use own staff as district returning officers and returning officers.

“Yes, discussions had been going on in the Election Commission for two to three months about benefiting from the services district administration officials; however, the ultimate decision now is to go for judicial officers,” a senior ECP official told The News. He claimed that letters had been written to the district administrations in this connection and many had provided lists of officers.

For 2013 general election too (marred by allegations of rigging and other irregularities), judicial officers were appointed for crucial election-related duties. “In the given situation, to lend credibility and impartiality to the nationwide electoral exercise, the best possible option before us is to go for judicial officers,” the official maintained.

Defending the decision, he said the commission was already understaffed and the burden of electoral exercise would be massive with voters and candidates more than the previous elections. He also explained that several Election Commission officers still needed proper logistics, besides other things, to be able to work as returning officers, whereas the judicial officers already had well-equipped infrastructure to perform their duty.

It may be recalled that the judiciary had enunciated in the 2009 National Judicial Policy that no judge will do the election duty. However, the Election Commission and political parties had requested the-then chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to do the needful and he had obliged by sparing judicial officers for the election duty.

It is being speculated that the ECP’s decision to seek the services of judicial officers was an attempt to gauge the reaction of political parties, as some of them had termed the 2013 elections the ‘ROs election’.