Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and Defense Minister Khawaja Asif have raised the possibility of a delay in holding the next general elections.
The coalition administration led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had previously announced that the assemblies would be dissolved on August 9 (tomorrow).
However, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on August 1 that elections would be held on the basis of the latest census. Although some of the ruling allies, including the PPP, had opposed holding the polls under the fresh census, the Council of Common Interest (CII) on Saturday had approved the results of the 2023 digital census.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, while talking to a private tv channel, said that 2023 was not the election year. When asked if 2023 was the year when elections would be held, the minister said, “It is an absolutely straightforward answer — no.”
When asked about the possibility of a caretaker set up being around for more than three months, Sanaullah said that this is not an anomaly. He said according to the Constitution, a second election cannot be held based on the 2017 census as that had been accepted “provisionally for a single time”.
He went on to reiterate that under the Constitution, another general election could not be held on the 2017 census results as they had been accepted “provisionally for a single time”.
In an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson that was aired last night, the defence minister said that elections were “due in November”.
“Ninety days in the deadline. One cannot go beyond 90 days. But under some conditions, the election commission has the power to delay it, because of some election problem or census problem or electoral role problem, for a month or two but not beyond that,” he said.
When Anderson inquired whether approval of the 2023 census could cause delays in the holding of polls, Asif said that he couldn’t speculate on it at the time but it is a possibility. “I won’t rule that out”.
