24-hour ultimatum: Supreme Court orders ECP to set LG polls date

Two-member bench slams poll body and provinces for inaction.

ISLAMABAD:

After months of wrangling, the Supreme Court on Thursday directed the top poll body to fix a date for the local government elections in Punjab, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) within 24 hours.

Irked by the delay in LG polls, the two-member bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Jawwad S Khawaja, said that the provincial governments and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had not given a valid reason to justify their failure to hold the LG elections in the country.

During the hearing, which lasted over an hour, the judges said that they would like to find out who may have been responsible for delaying the electoral exercise, which according to them, amounted to violation of the Constitution.

Scathingly critiquing the inaction by provincial and federal authorities, Justice Khawaja said, “We are playing with the Constitution.”

Heaping scorn on the poll supervisory body, the judge said that it seems that the commission is not working efficiently. The court, according to him, will deliberate further upon the date for the elections on Friday (today).



The judges recalled that out of four provincial governments; only the Balochistan government has held LG polls thus far.

Interestingly, while the bench was dictating its order, Abdul Rehman, ECP’s additional director general retracted his statement whereby he had informed the court that K-P would hold LG polls in the month of May.

Seeking additional time to submit his reply, the ECP official said that he would provide exact details regarding the elections in the province after consultation with the poll body’s top officials. Subsequently, the court allowed him to consult ECP authorities regarding the precise polling dates for the province.

During the course of Thursday’s hearing, both Punjab and Sindh governments informed the top court that they were ready to hold the LG elections on any date announced by the poll supervisory body.

In a statement before the court, Punjab Chief Secretary, Khizar Hayat Gondal said that the province had already provided information related to the demarcation of local areas to the ECP – a prerequisite before the LG polls. He added that the province was prepared for the electoral exercise.

Giving a similar undertaking, Fateh Malik, Sindh’s top law officer, said that the province is ready to hold LG polls. To pave way for the elections, he said, the provincial legislature passed the Sindh Local Government Amendment Bill 2015, earlier this week.

On polls in Cantonment Areas, Deputy Attorney General Sajid Ilyas Bhatti informed the apex court that the promulgation of an ordinance to amend the Cantonment Act 1924 has been delayed due to the legislative session of the upper house of parliament.

Subsequently, the bench summoned the attorney general on Friday (today) over the delay in holding the LG polls in the Cantonment Areas and adjourned the hearing.

The top court had set November 15, 2014 as the date for the announcement of an election schedule and completing the process required for the electoral exercise.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2015.