Second Constituent Assembly of Pakistan: Politics for Dissolution of Former Assembly and Electoral Regulations for New Assembly

Abstract

One part of this paper uncovers how the politics around the demands for the dissolution and re-election of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan took place subsequent to the elections for the country’s provincial legislatures, especially in East Pakistan. Following the dissolution of the Assembly, Pakistan was tangled into a political quagmire about the election of the successor of the Constituent Assembly. The politics around pre-election legislation to resolve this predicament is recorded in the second part of the study. The British archival record makes the most of source material of this study. These records provide impartial and third party accounts – hence are reliable sources – of the political developments of the period under consideration. As in the period, Pakistan was a dominion state under the British the records of Dominion Office (DO) or Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) bear detailed inside and secret information that is rarely available in indigenous historical works. Therefore, the study provides a thorough and impartial historical explanation of the electoral politics on the dissolution of the original Constituent Assembly and formation legal framework for the constitution of the new Assembly.