By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan moved closer to holding general elections in January 2024 as the election commission on Wednesday released a preliminary report on the delimitation of constituencies based on the latest digital census.
The report, which was published ahead of the original deadline of October 9, showed the allocation of seats in the national and provincial assemblies according to the population of each district.
The total number of seats in the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, remained unchanged at 336, with 60 reserved for women and 10 for non-Muslims. However, some districts gained or lost seats due to changes in their population.
Punjab, the most populous province, retained its majority of 141 seats in the National Assembly, followed by Sindh with 61, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) with 45, Balochistan with 16, and Islamabad with three.
In the provincial assemblies, Punjab had the highest number of seats at 371, followed by Sindh with 168, KP with 145, and Balochistan with 65.
“The share of seats in the National Assembly and in the Provincial Assemblies in respect of each district has been worked out on the basis of the final results of the 7th Digital population and Housing Census-2023, officially published on 7th August, 2023,” the ECP said in a statement.
“The population of the province/area has been divided by the total number of general seats and the average population or quota per National Assembly seat was obtained. Similarly, the population of a province was divided by the total number of general seats allocated to the provincial assembly to obtain a quota per seat.”
“In calculating the total number of seats, a fraction of 0.5 and above was generally taken as one seat and a fraction below 0.5 was ignored. Due to the peculiar situation in Balochistan, more than one district has been clubbed. Similarly, few clubbings have also been made in other provinces where necessary.”
The delimitation exercise is seen as a key step towards holding the polls, which were supposed to take place within 90 days of the dissolution of the previous parliament in August 2023.
However, speculations continue on the fate of the polls, with many claiming the exercise could be delayed by at least a year, on one pretext or the other.
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