ECP decided to withdraw from briefing the president over the elections in Punjab and KP

ISLAMABAD:- When the case was in court, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) excused itself from meeting President Arif Alvi over the provincial assembly elections.

In its letter, the Secretary of Elections claimed that the governors were contacted for the election dates in accordance with the Constitution after the dissolution of the Punjab and KP legislatures. It further said that while the governors had replied to the ECP’s letters, neither had set a date for the elections as of yet.

The Punjab governor was consulted on February 14 in accordance with Lahore High Court (LHC) instructions, the commission said, but he “regretted to announce a poll date and indicated that he would use legal remedies against the verdict of the LHC as it was not obligatory on him.”

As stated in Article 112(1) of the Constitution, it is “cleared that the Constitution does not enable the ECP to designate a poll date in case of the dissolution of a provincial legislature by the governor or owing to afflux of time,” according to the letter.

Along with other writ petitions that are now ongoing in the Peshawar High Court, the ECP also mentioned the intra-court challenges it filed against the judgement after the LHC requested that it conduct the consultation despite the Constitution not having any such provisions.

In order to confer on the dates for the elections in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Punjab, President Alvi on Friday called Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja to a “urgent meeting” on February 20.