IHC reserves verdict on pleas challenging delineations of Ch Nisar’s constituencies

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday reserved its verdict on the petition filed against the demarcations of veteran politician Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s National Assembly (NA) and Punjab Assembly constituencies NA-53 and PP-10, respectively, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

IHC Chief Justice (CJ) Justice Aamer Farooq reserved the verdict after listening to the arguments by the lawyers representing the petitioner and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

Giving his arguments in the case, Petitioner Sheikh Sajidur Rehman’s counsel Kashif Malik Advocate said that under section 10, no changes could be made to an administrative unit.

He was of the view that demarcations of constituencies should be done to facilitate the people rather than to create inconvenience for them.  

The lawyer went on to say that in this case delimitations had been done in violation of the law since it took 40 minutes for the people of these constituencies to reach Gujjar Khan.

He prayed to the court to order the ECP to again include Sagri area in NA-53, which had earlier been excluded from the constituency and made part of Gujjer Khan.

Disagreeing with the petitioner, the ECP’s lawyer said delimitations of these constituencies had been done in the light of the Supreme Court (SC) verdict, and no changes could be made to them now.   

He further said that if the petitioner’s arguments were accepted, the population of NA-52, an adjoining constituency of NA-53, would be less than the set standard.

Reporter: Rozeena Ali