ISLAMABAD  -  The Election Commission of Pakistan [ECP] will soon re­ply in writing to the letter of the President regarding his proposal to conduct polls on November 6. The ECP, accord­ing to the sources, will reply to the letter of President Arif Alvi quoting all the legal and consti­tutional bindings. It is unlikely the election body will accept the proposal of the President to conduct polls in the first week of next month.

The commission will take advice of its legal team to aptly reply to the content of the let­ter. The legal team will share the binding related to delimi­tation of the constituencies after the approval of Council of Common Interests (CCI). 

President Ariv Alvi the other day [Wednesday] had written to the ECP proposing that the general election in the country should be held no later than November 6 which marks the 89th day since the dissolution. Alvi citing Article 48(5) of the Constitution, said this article mandated him to set the date for the elections not later than 90 days from the date of the dissolution. The letter read, “Article 48(5) of the Constitu­tion empowers and mandates the President “to appoint a date not later than ninety days from the date of the dissolu­tion, for the holding of a gen­eral election to the Assembly”. “In terms of Article 48(5) the general election to the National Assembly should be held by the eighty-ninth day of the date of dissolution of the National As­sembly, i.e. Monday 6™ Day of November 2023,” it added. Alvi also wrote in his letter that, “In an endeavour to fulfil the constitutional obligations, the Chief Election Commissioner was invited for a meeting to devise the modalities of imple­menting the Constitutional in­tent and mandate who in reply took a contrary view that as per the scheme of the Constitu­tion and framework of electoral laws, it was the domain of the Election Commission, and fol­lowing publication of last pre­ceding census on 07.08.2023, duly notified delimitation of constituencies was in progress, a mandatory requirement stip­ulated by Article 51(5) of the Constitution and section 17 of the Elections Act, 2017.”