CJP offers to fund 'timely' polls via pay cuts.

ISLAMABAD -- In light of claims made by the government regarding financial difficulties to hold timely elections, Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial on Tuesday proposed the salaried class, including judges, could take a five per cent pay cut to fund the polls.

The chief justice made these remarks as a five-member bench was hearing a case against the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) notification dated March 22, which postponed Punjab Assembly elections, for being unconstitutional and illegal.

During the hearing, the newly-appointed attorney general for Pakistan, Mansoor Usman Awan, argued that the International Monetary Fund did not set any conditions regarding elections, but the global lender required an additional collection of Rs170 billion during the last four months of the current fiscal year.

'In view of the existing shortfall, we have to raise additional taxes and keep the inflation down,' AGP Awan said. Justice Munib Akhtar observed that the requirement of Rs20 billion for holding the elections in Punjab was not even a 'pocket change'. He added the court 'understands the difficulty but has this difficulty risen to a situation that everything has become impossible'.

The government did not have money to hold separate elections in provinces but it has the money to conduct joint elections, the CJP observed.

Justice Bandial further obserAved that the ECP did not have any right or legal backing to extend the election date till Oct 8 and asked the AGP to get instructions from the federal government in this regard.

'Internal matter'

Justice Jamal Khan MandoAkhail, one of the two judges who had cast aspersion on the March 1 judgement regarding elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Punjab, said the disagreement on the judgement was an internal matter of the judiciary.

'Forget about whether the March 1 judgement had rejected the suo motu judgement by a majority of four to three or three to two, it is our internal matter,' Justice Mandokhail said.

'Even if we set aside the ECP notification regarding the postponement of Punjab Assembly elections till Oct 8, the real question remains which authority the ECP should approach [for elections date],' he said, regretting that no one wanted to stick to the Constitution.

Justice Mandokhail also reminded that even the date - April 30 - announced by the president for holding elections in Punjab jumped the 90-day stipulated period enshrined in the Constitution.

Justice Bandial was quick...