ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa petition seeking to postpone the second phase of local government elections scheduled to be held on March 31, refusing to interfere in the working of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) which it said would set a bad precedent.
During the hearing, Justice Ijaz ul-Ahsan remarked there was no incentive for the apex court to interfere in the elections process. It was the jurisdiction of, and therefore up to, the ECP to decide to hold or put off the elections on the said date, he added.
While rejecting the petition, the Supreme Court ordered the ECP to listen to the position of all stakeholders including the provincial government and decide accordingly.
Justice Ahsan said: “For personal interests, they should not shatter people’s confidence in state institutions.”
A counsel for the ECP told the court the KP government itself gave the March 25 date for the holding of polls and it was not even a party to the case pending with the Peshawar High Court (PHC).
On this, the judge observed that now the provincial government itself was requesting to change the schedule.
“The KP government says that it will hold the election after Ramadan. Tomorrow, it will say it will conduct it after Eid ul-Fitr. After that, it will say Eid ul-Adha is approaching. Then Muharram will arrive and so on. It means the polls will never be held,” he added.
Justice Ahsan said since the ECP released the election schedule for March 31, the court would not give any order against its decision.
“The second phase of the polls will be held on March 31,” the judge pronounced, adding if the ECP wanted, it could postpone the election.
With this, the court said that after the new ECP schedule, all appeals had become ineffective and rejected the petition to halt the elections.
