- S&GAD Punjab has started compiling the list of 300 officers.
- The ECP had written to the chief justices of Lahore, Peshawar high courts on April 30.
- Deploying officers for elections is not a new phenomenon: Dilshad
LAHORE: Due to lack of response from the judiciary, district returning officers are likely to be deputed from the executive to carry out election duties. news Reported on Thursday.
Sources told the publication that the development took place after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) received no response from the judiciary for the appointment of judicial officers to monitor the upcoming elections to be held in the last week of January next year.
Sources said that in this context, S&GAD Punjab and its service branch have started compiling the list of 300 BPS 17 to BPS-20 officers.
Officials working in the respective Chief Minister’s Secretariat, Governor House and administrative posts are not included in the S&GAD list.
According to sources, the ECP on April 30 wrote to the Chief Justices of Lahore and Peshawar High Courts to designate judicial staff as Returning and District Returning Officers (RO, DRO) to monitor the provincial elections in Punjab and KP. . But the commission did not get any reply.
He said, if the commission does not receive any response in the next two to three days, the list of officers to be appointed as ROs for conducting elections in 297 Punjab Assembly seats and 141 National Assembly seats will be sent to the ECP.
Apart from this, the executive officers will also be assigned the duty as District Returning Officers in 42 districts of Punjab. Later, after their investigation, ECP will depute them.
When former ECP secretary Kanwar Dilshad was contacted, he said that Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja had written to the Chief Justices several times, but was told that “judicial officers are engaged”. He said the ECP is still waiting for a response from the judiciary and if the commission does not receive any response, it will appoint officers as returning and district returning officers.
Dilshad said that deployment of officials to monitor elections is not a new phenomenon.
He conducted elections from 1977 to 1985. This changed after former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and former President Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari demanded then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan to remove returns from the judiciary and appoint district returning officers.
Since 1988, elections have been held under the supervision of the judiciary.
