Pakistan Punjab assembly polls to be held on April 30: President Alvi

Islamabad: Pakistan's Punjab province will go to polls on April 30, President Arif Alvi announced on Friday, hours after the country's top electoral body wrote a letter to him suggesting possible poll dates as directed by the Supreme Court.

According to the President's Office, the decision was made by Alvi after "considering the dates proposed by the Election Commission of Pakistan".

"President Dr. Arif Alvi has announced the date of 30th April 2023 (Sunday) for holding the general elections of the Provincial Assembly of Punjab," the President's office tweeted.

Earlier on Friday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), in its letter to Alvi, recommended that the polls for the provincial assembly in Punjab be held between April 30 and May 7.

The announcement comes two days after the Supreme Court ruled that the elections to the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) assemblies be held within the stipulated period of 90 days.

It, however, allowed the ECP to propose a poll date that deviates from the 90-day deadline by the “barest minimum”, in case of any practical difficulty, the Dawn newspaper reported.

It also held that President Alvi and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governor will fix dates for Punjab and KP assemblies, respectively, in consultation with the ECP.

The Punjab and KP assemblies were dissolved on January 14 and January 18 respectively, and under the law, the elections should be held within 90 days after their dissolution.

The announcement of the date was delayed due to wrangling between main political parties, prompting the apex court to take notice and order that elections should be held within time or after a slight delay.

The provincial assembly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was dissolved after Governor Haji Ghulam Ali accepted the request for dissolution by Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, who is a leader of ousted premier Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

The assembly in Punjab was dissolved on Khan’s order. Both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab were ruled by the PTI.

The dissolution of the two provincial assemblies is seen as a bid by Khan to push for early national elections.

The former prime minister has been demanding fresh polls ever since he was ousted from the top job through a no-confidence motion in April 2022.

The ruling coalition wanted to delay the polls in Punjab and hold them with the national elections after August this year. But the PTI had been fighting for early elections in Punjab province and to use it to get snap polls at the centre too.

PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry said on Friday that his party has welcomed the electoral body’s announcement and called it a “step in the right direction”.

“We believe that the ECP took the right step in light of the SC’s order,” he said in a video message on Twitter.

“We congratulate the public. This is a victory for the PTI, the nation and the Constitution,” he said.

President Alvi, who is from Khan’s party, last month invited Pakistan’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja for an urgent meeting to discuss poll dates for the two assemblies.

He wrote a second letter to the ECP after he did not receive any response to his previous letter written on February 8. In the second letter, the president expressed his displeasure over the “apathy and inaction” on the part of the electoral watchdog.

The move drew sharp criticism from ministers of the ruling coalition who accused him of acting on former premier Khan’s advice to put pressure on the country’s electoral watchdog to announce poll dates for provincial assemblies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.

The ECP had said it would announce the poll schedule only after the “competent authority” fixes the date.