A file photo of Election Commission of Pakistan. PHOTO: ECP.GOV.PK
Perturbed by dilly-dallying tactics of the two provinces, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has summoned local government secretaries of Punjab and Sindh on Friday (today) to ask them for a tentative date for holding Local Government (LG) polls.
The ECP is in a fix over possible schedule of the LG polls for the two provinces which it has to submit before the Supreme Court (SC) on February 12.
The SC on January 8 had asked the ECP to submit schedule of LG polls for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), Punjab and Sindh in the next hearing which it fixed for February 12.
The ECP is confident that it can issue schedule for the LG polls in K-P by end of March and polls in the province can be held by end of May or in early June this year.
However, Punjab and Sindh are lagging behind and need to complete the pre-requisites. The delimitations they had carried out in 2013 were scrapped by the superior courts after complaints of anomalies in the exercise.
The courts had directed that the ECP should demarcate the boundaries of the LG constituencies through a fresh delimitation exercise. This is pending since then as the two provinces have yet to hand over fully the maps and data to the ECP.
After the January 8 directives of the SC, the ECP sent these provinces letters to complete the process within one month. It also asked them to appoint focal persons with whom the ECP remains in touch to get the required documents.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 6th, 2015.
COMMENTS (4)
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IF PTI successfully conducts LG elections in a transparent manner, and then devolves powers to the LG in the true sense, then I think no one can stop PTI from sweeping next General elections.
As long as NAWAZ and his brother are alive and kicking they will go to any extent to avoid this enormous source of income from public funds to their MNAs and MPAs.This is how they save "Democracy"of their making.
PTI will take a massive step towards progress if this can be done by June as Punjab and Sindh will never want to hold local body elections. They hate losing control and now that PTI will win massively in Pubjab and local work will be done by PTI in the cities and guess who gets elected?
When generals rule pakistan - we have local body elections When politicians come back - we have no local body elections
Welcome to Pakistan.
How these democrats would dare to conduct local bodies election, after having poll power will certainly be devolved and new leadership will likely to emerge endangering their status