Alvi blocks bill seen as a ruse to delay Islamabad LG polls

President Dr Arif Alvi on Sunday returned the Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2022 unsigned in terms of clause (1) (b) of Article 75 of the Constitution – a legislation that would have increased its number of union councils --  accusing the federal government of "mala fide actions" and also observing that it would further delay the LG elections.

The president returned the bill days after the Senate had passed it after its chairman, Sadiq Sanjrani, had hurriedly summoned a session of the upper house of parliament on December 23 on the government’s requisition when Alvi had refused to give his nod to it.

“[The] actions of the federal government taken in hurry resulted in delaying [the] election process twice, which was anathema to democracy,” President Alvi tweeted while sending back the bill.

He added that the LG elections could not be held in ICT because of several “malafide actions of [the] federal government”.

Alvi noted that after the completion of the delimitation of 50 union councils, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced elections for the LG polls in Islamabad on July 31, 2022.

“Despite [the] announcement of [the] polling date, the government increased the number of union councils from 50 to 101, resulting in [the] postponement of [the LG] elections,” he added.

After the demarcation of 101 union councils, Alvi pointed out that the ECP had decided to hold the LG elections in ICT on December 31, 2022.

However, he added that Section 2 of the current bill provided for 125 union councils in the federal capital.

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Therefore, he contended that the elections scheduled for December 31, 2022 had again been postponed.

Alvi further noted that as per Section 3 of the current bill, the mode of elections for the mayor and their deputy had been changed after the announcement of the schedule of elections.

The government had passed the bill allegedly to delay LG polls in the federal capital and dodged the president’s refusal to summon the Senate session.

The December 23 Senate session, which was summoned at almost an hour’s notice, had only one objective to achieve: to pass the bill so that the LG elections could be delayed for an “indefinite period”, a senator had told The Express Tribune.

The move, however, drew protest from the opposition and sloganeering chiding the government for running away from the elections.

Although the agenda stated that the House would debate the situation arising out of the recent wave of terrorism in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa along with the overall law and order situation in the country and take up any other important legislative business, it only ended up passing the bill before the session was hurriedly prorogued.

Though the government found another way of summoning the session following the president’s refusal, it is ironic that the bill passed had to be ratified by Alvi, who belongs to the PTI, whose senators surrounded the chairman’s desk and protested against the bill throughout the session.

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Answering the question of how would the bill help the government in delaying the Islamabad LG polls when the president was the final authority to make it a law, a senator from the ruling alliance replied in the affirmative and confirmed that it had to be ratified by Alvi to become law.

The government’s move had come days after the federal cabinet announced increasing the number of union councils from the existing 101 to 125 just 10 days prior to the LG polls.

However, it was reported that the ECP later announced that the LG elections in the federal capital would be held as per schedule on December 31.

The electoral watchdog had declared the federal government’s notification to increase the number of union councils in ICT ‘illegal’, which was seen as a major blow to the Centre as it had allegedly considered its move sufficient to delay the polls.