ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top court on Friday ordered a regulator to issue a schedule for general elections tonight and suspended a Lahore High Court (LHC) ruling that had stayed the appointment of returning officers (ROs) and district returning officers (DROs) from the bureaucracy.
The development comes a day after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) paused, following the Lahore High Court verdict, a training session for ROs and DROs, an exercise without which polls scheduled for Feb. 8 could be delayed. The move had led to widespread media speculation elections would not be held in time as the election regulator needs to issue the elections schedule by Friday night in order for political parties to have a 54-day window for electioneering.
“Do your job,” Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Qazi Faez Isa ordered the ECP on Friday, suspending the Lahore High Court order. “Issue the elections schedule tonight ... We will not allow anybody to derail the democracy.”
In the evening, Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja held a detailed meeting with the chief justice and other judges of the Supreme Court to reportedly discuss the Lahore High Court directive and ensuing situation. Later, the ECP filed a petition in the top court seeking an annulment of the Lahore High Court’s judgment.
The court also issued a contempt notice to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Barrister Umair Khan Niazi who had filed a petition in the Lahore High Court seeking the appointment of returning officers from the judiciary. The ECP has appointed over one thousand returning officers across the country to conduct the national polls. Their job is to ensure that the election process is administered effectively to ensure free and fair elections.
The top court later stopped the Lahore High Court from further hearings on the plea, saying it had passed the judgment in ‘undue haste,’ and adjourned the hearing for an indefinite time.
A caretaker government under interim Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar is running the country until the national election is held and a winning party can secure a parliamentary majority and select a new prime minister.
As it stands, questions surround the legitimacy of the election, whenever it is held, as former prime minister Imran Khan, the main opposition leader and arguably the country’s most popular politician, cannot fight this election.
Khan is currently jailed for three years after being convicted on graft charges and is barred from contesting any elections for five years.
His party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), won the last general election in 2018, and he became prime minister until his ouster in a no-confidence vote in parliament in 2022.
Pakistan’s top court directs regulator to issue general election schedule tonight
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Pakistan’s top court directs regulator to issue general election schedule tonight
- Supreme Court order puts an end to speculations regarding delay in holding of general elections
- Bars Lahore High Court from further hearings of plea on appointment of returning officers from judiciary
Pakistan blocks ‘thousands’ of passports in crackdown on overseas begging in Gulf countries
- Authorities impose five- to 10-year passport restrictions on deported offenders, report sharp decline in cases
- Government links enforcement drive to broader push for skilled labor exports and record remittance inflows
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked “several thousand passports” and imposed long-term travel restrictions on citizens involved in begging abroad, the country’s overseas minister said on Wednesday, reporting a sharp decline in such cases following enforcement reforms.
Last August, the government announced a sweeping crackdown on what it described as a “beggar mafia” accused of exploiting visas to solicit money in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states. The practice had drawn complaints from Riyadh, prompting Islamabad to direct the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to curb the trend.
Federal Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Chaudhry Salik Hussain said authorities were targeting individuals who misuse Umrah and other visit visas to beg overseas, particularly in Gulf countries.
“We are not sending the beggars abroad,” he said at the Pakistan Governance Forum 2026 in the federal capital. “It is not written on the face of the beggar that he is a beggar. They go through the normal process of getting a visa for Umrah and then start this work on the side.”
Hussain said passports of deported individuals involved in begging or criminal activity were being blocked to prevent repeat travel.
“For that we can only do that if someone is involved in this work and he is caught and when he is deported, then at least we block his passport, which is happening,” he said. “Believe me, there has been a drastic drop in this.”
“There is no visa for begging. They go on a normal visa. Every document is 100 percent correct,” he added.
According to Hussain, the FIA is imposing passport restrictions of five to 10 years on offenders, preventing them from obtaining new travel documents.
He added that “several thousand passports” had so far been blocked.
Pakistan, which relies heavily on remittances from its overseas workforce, is also seeking to improve the quality of labor exports following meetings with labor ministers in Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
“We want our workforce to go there. The quantity is increasing but the quality element is very important,” he said, adding that the government plans to make soft skills training compulsory for Pakistanis going abroad “from the labor class to the undergraduates” so they better understand local norms and regulations.
The minister said exporting skilled labor helps ease unemployment pressures driven by Pakistan’s growing youth population while boosting remittances, which recently hit an all-time high.
“I think this is one of the reasons because our youth bulge is very high in Pakistan and local industries are not enough to cater to that. So we should at least find good jobs in foreign countries and send them there,” he said, adding that overseas workers “not only get employed but also send valuable remittances back home.”
Hussain said broader reforms were also under way to digitize overseas employment processes and reduce corruption.
“We are moving toward maximum digitization,” he said. “Problems and issues arise where humans interact with humans. We are moving toward digitization very quickly.”
