Pakistan elections to be held on 11 February: ECP tells Supreme Court

General elections in Pakistan will be held on February 11, 2024, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) informed the country’s Supreme Court on Thursday. The date of Pakistan general elections was shared with the apex court by the ECP’s lawyer during the hearing of petitions calling for timely polls across the country.

ECP’s lawyer Sajeel Swati told the three-member bench that the process of drawing constituencies would be completed by Jan 29 paving the way for polls.

The dates were revealed by the poll body’s counsel as the court resumed hearing a set of petitions calling for holding elections within 90 days after the dissolution of the National Assembly and the provincial legislatures.

At the previous hearing, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had issued notices to the ECP and the federal government for their input on polls within 90 days. The CJP had observed there were no two opinions that “all of us want elections, but a wrong impression is being created that we are not interested”. In September, the ECP, without mentioning the exact date, had said general elections would take place in the last week of January 2024. Also, last week, Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar had expressed hope that the ECP would shortly announce the date of the polls. “It seems that the date of the elections will be announced quite soon," Kakar told reporters at a news conference. Commenting on the issue of equal political space for parties in Pakistan, he said, “No political party has been left out of the political process and that the caretaker government is doing its best to assist the electoral process.” “We want no political party, entity and its associated political players to be out of the (election) process, but if any restriction is imposed by the court, we have to obey the orders,” he said as former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is facing legal challenges and some of the top leaders of the party are in jail. “Can’t comment if level playing field means ensuring a particular party’s win. (We) remember the level playing field of 2018 when the South Punjab front came into being," Kakar had said. With inputs from agencies