LAHORE: Members of the Punjab Assembly’s treasury benches introduced a bill on Friday, seeking approval to change boundaries of local government constituencies and legalise already established districts in the province by amending the Punjab Local Government Amendment Bill 2001.
The bill, titled Punjab Local Government Amendment Bill 2012, has been referred to the relevant standing committee and will later be brought to the house for discussion and approval.
Under the bill, treasury members approved the addition of sub-section 5(a) in Section 179-A of PLGO 2001. The new sub-section states that, subject to previous publication and notification in the official gazette, the Punjab government may change boundaries of a union council, district or town and such change shall take effect from the notification date.
Earlier, the Punjab government, through the PLGO Second Amendment Bill 2011, postponed holding local body elections by 180 days.
‘Seeking political benefit’
“Instead of addressing real civic issues, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz is going to change boundaries,” Shaukat Mehmood Basra, the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Deputy Parliamentary Leader in the Punjab Assembly, told The Express Tribune.
He said that PPP’s representatives in the standing committee will make sure to present their viewpoint. “The government’s earlier step, in which it announced some towns in the province, was totally illegal and the PPP will resist it.”
According to the Punjab government’s statistics, currently there are 36 districts, 131 towns, 3,464 union councils and 25,914 villages in the province. The government has not specified how many new towns it plans to establish in the province.
PIC report
Earlier, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan spoke about the Memogate affair, which seems to have hit a stalemate after protagonist Mansoor Ijaz refused to come to Pakistan to testify before the Supreme Court.
“The Memogate commission can probe the scandal in the light of evidence submitted by Inter-Services Intelligence Director-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, as he has spent considerable time investigating abroad and in Pakistan,” Sanaullah told reporters outside the Punjab Assembly.
Reiterating Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s stance, he said that if Ijaz decides to come to Pakistan, the Punjab government will provide him foolproof security.
Defending Shahbaz, he said that the chief minister has so many occupations that he cannot attend assembly sessions. Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Gilani, who has been appreciated for regularly attending National Assembly sessions, Sanaullah said that he had enough ‘free time’ to first speak and then backtrack from his statements on the floor.
However, he said, once a report is compiled on the free medicines fiasco, the chief minister will present it before the house himself.
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