If the Senate election takes place in March 2021 as scheduled,
the PTI is likely to emerge as the largest party in the house, displacing the
PML-N from that position.Not only that, the coalition led by the PTI may
either get a majority or be a breath away from controlling the Senate after
the election. This will be a significant shift in the power structure of the
country as the constituent parties of the PDM, which decisively control the
current Senate, will be reduced to a minority. This change will certainly
ease a lot of the PTI`s current problems such as the passage of legislation
considered important by the government but stuck in the Senate.
#Shorthand #Passage |
2. The opposition PDM alliance plans to disrupt the expected unfavourable (for the PDM) outcome of the forthcoming Senate election by forcing the government through street agitation to call for fresh general elections before March 2021. This is a political move with associated uncertainties and risks. In parallel, the PDM thinks it can make a legal move to stall the Senate election by resigning enmasse from the national and provincial assemblies. Some PDM leaders think that the resignations may render the electoral college for Senate elections incomplete which in turn may make the Senate election constitutionally untenable.
#Dictation #115wpm
3. Apparently, it seems that mass resignations of legislators belonging to the PDM parties will not be able to disrupt the Senate election. Although the Constitution is not explicit on the subject, Elections Act, 2017, leaves no doubt that vacancies in the electoral college which, in this case, are the national and provincial assemblies, cannot stall the upcoming election, at least from a legal standpoint.
4. Chapter VII of the Act deals with the conduct of elections to the Senate and Section 130 deals specifically with the question of vacancies in the electoral college. It reads: `An election of a Member of the Senate by the Members of a Provincial Assembly, Members of the National Assembly ... as the case may be, shall not be called in question on the ground merely of the existence of any vacancy in the membership of the Assembly....The law, therefore, hardly leaves any doubt as far as the legality of the Senate election after resignations is concerned.