The public Voice Poll is urging the implementation of divisional quotas for women’s reserved seats in the National and Provincial Assemblies. This initiative aims to ensure fair geographical representation for women and encourage their increased participation in regions where their involvement in politics is limited.
Contrary to the intended purpose of achieving greater representativeness, the current practice of treating entire provinces as a single constituency for reserved seat elections enables political parties to select candidates from any location of their choice. This has led to an imbalanced distribution of quotas, with a few divisions and districts dominating representation, leaving a significant number of districts and divisions unrepresented. In the current National Assembly, five out of 29 administrative divisions are overrepresented, eight are proportionately represented, and 16 have no representation at all.
Reserved Seats for Women: Dominance of Six Cities Presently, 57 percent of representatives elected on women’s reserved seats in the National Assembly hail from six cities—Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and Quetta—according to their nomination papers. Similarly, a majority of representatives elected on women’s reserved seats in provincial assemblies in 2018 listed residential addresses in the provincial capitals.
Public Voice Poll suggests amending Sections 19(2) and 19(5) of the Elections Act, 2017, to establish administrative divisions as territorial constituencies within a province for seats reserved for women under Articles 51(3) and 106(1) of the Constitution. Currently, these sections merely replicate the constitutional provisions of Articles 51(6)(b) and 106(3)(b).
Parliament’s Solution Public Voice Poll argues that Article 51(6)(d) read with Article 34 of the Constitution provides legislative space for Parliament to allow divisional representation on reserved seats without requiring a constitutional amendment. While considering such a legislative proposal, Parliament should also address cases where the number of seats allocated to a province is less than the number of administrative divisions.
Territorial constituencies within the province would enable the appointment of multiple Returning Officers for women’s reserved seats, allowing women to participate in the nomination and scrutiny processes closer to their homes. Section 51(1) of the Elections Act, 2017, mandates the Election Commission of Pakistan to appoint one Returning Officer for each constituency.
Based on the residential addresses of reserved-seat women legislators, 105 out of 136 districts existing at the time of GE-2018 had no women representative in the National Assembly on reserved seats. Province-wise, 23 districts in Punjab, 32 in Balochistan, 30 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and 20 in Sindh lack representation of women on reserved seats in the National Assembly.
