According to ECP the results will be announced on June 7. PHOTO: HAFSA KHAWAJA
After much ado, the top poll supervisory body has finally unveiled the schedule for local government elections in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The multi-tier elections will be held on May 30 and the results will be announced on June 7, according to the schedule to be formally announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Monday.
The province, where Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf is in power, will see LG elections after a hiatus of nearly 10 years as the last such electoral exercise was conducted here in 2005 under the local government system introduced by then military strongman Pervez Musharraf.
The incumbent legislature, however, has adopted a multi-tier LG system for the province which envisages village councils for rural areas and neighbourhood councils for urban centres to be headed by nazims and naib nazims.
Under this system, every voter will cast vote for seven categories. The voter will be given seven ballot papers all in different colours to differentiate with choice to vote for one candidate in the list for each category.
The voter will be voting for general, women, farmer, labourer and youth categories, all of these will be contesting polls on a non-party basis. Additionally, there will be two other candidates: representatives for district and tehsil councils. Candidates for these two categories will be contesting polls on a party basis.
Contrary to previous LG systems in the country where elected councillors used to elect their chairmen/nazims to head their respective councils, in the new K-P LG system, a candidate securing maximum votes from their local constituency will automatically become nazim and the one obtaining second highest votes naib nazim of their respective council.
The provincial chapter of the ECP will notify the schedule on April 6 (tomorrow). According to the schedule finalised at the ECP headquarters in Islamabad, returning officers will receive nomination papers from April 13 to 17.
A list of candidates will be displayed at ECP’s district offices on April 18. Objections against nominations will be accepted on April 19, while nominations will be scrutinised from April 20 to 25. Appeals against rejection/acceptance of nominations will be heard by appellate authorities from April 29 to May 4. The final list of contestants and their election symbols will be notified on May 6. May 30 will be the polling day and results will be announced on June 7.
Pervez Musharraf’s LG system had expired in 2009. However, only Balochistan has completed its three-stage LG elections in December 2013. Punjab and Sindh, which have been dilly-dallying on LG elections, will hold the exercise in September this year. The local governments will be elected for a period of three years.
After the 18th Constitutional Amendment, the subject of local governments was devolved to the provinces where provincial assemblies were empowered to enact LG systems of their own choosing.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 5th, 2015.
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