LAHORE: The post-census increase in parliament’s seats is haunting the government and the opposition as both sides are engaged in an informal dialogue to develop a seemingly “impossible” consensus on what the Pakistan Peoples Party-Parliamen­tarians calls a delicate issue.

A source privy to the development told Dawn that both the PML-N and PPP-P have reservations regarding the seat increase.

According to the source, if the PPP-P is apprehensive about an “imbalance” in the urban-rural divide in Sindh, a group in the PML-N thinks it is “unmanageable” as at least 40 per cent of new faces are likely to be introduced against the increased seats in Punjab.

The source added that during the informal dialogue, the PPP-P was offered that any increase in the urban seats won’t be made at the cost of rural ones. In other words, the rural seats won’t be reduced even if the census records a decrease in the rural population.

“This is a delicate issue and will depend on two things,” said PPP-P secretary general Farhatullah Babar.

“First, whether and how the headcount of a large number of people in rural Sindh (with no Computerised National Identity Cards) is carried out. Second, where people from other parts of the country living and working in Karachi are lumped in the headcount,” he added.

A PML-N leader, who is part of the ongoing dialogue, claimed that the issue might be resolved like in Balochistan which was exempted from the formula applied in other parts of the country. In certain areas of Balochistan, a population of a few thousands is fixed for demarcating a constituency.

He admitted that a group in the ruling party was worried about the population increase that might be recorded in the census as it might lead to a 40pc increase in parliamentary seats if the present formula for carving out a constituency, a population of 400,000 to 500,000 for a National Assembly seat in Punjab, is to be adopted.

The group, he explained, was apprehensive that such a large number of new “electables” might not be managed.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, who also counsels the central leadership in legal and technical affairs, denied this. He argued that the party had managed more than 70pc candidates in the previous polls. He added that it won’t be difficult for them to manage 40pc more.

Consensus

Developing a consensus among all stakeholders will be a real task as the seat increase will not happen automatically after the census.

As the total number of seats and their distribution among federating units as well as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) is fixed in Article 51 of the Constitution only parliament is empowered to amend the basic law. Any other institution, including the Election Commission (ECP), cannot act on its own to increase the seats post census.

Former ECP secretary Kanwar Dilshad explained that in the absence of a constitutional amendment, the commission was empowered only to adjust the extra population pointed out in the latest census in the existing constituencies.

The total new population of a province would be divided by the total number of seats allocated to it in the constitution for fixing strength of population for each constituency, he said.

For the adjustment too, the ECP would have to wait for a formal notification from the statistics division before embarking on the re-demarcation process, he added.

Politicians are well aware of the difficulties to be faced in increasing the seats and are discussing and framing their stances in informal gatherings.

Mr Babar said the step would require constitutional amendments as well as simple legislation “that will not be so easy”.

Mr Sanaullah thinks that it will be more difficult than developing a consensus on the National Finance Commission (NFC) award, which distributes financial resources among provinces.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, which has not yet been taken into the loop about the informal dialogue between the PML-N and PPP-P, is also informally working on the subject.

“Though the government or any other party has not approached us for the purpose, we are informally discussing our likely policy,” said PTI’s central leader Shafqat Mahmood.

He pointed out that the issue was more sensitive in the perspective of Baloch and Pakhtun divide in Balochistan and urban-rural split in Sindh. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa too will have its own reservations as a sizable chunk of its population works in Punjab and Sindh, he added.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2017