First phase of LG polls in Sindh, Punjab on Oct 12

Polling to be held in 13 districts of Sindh and 12 of Punjab

ISLAMABAD:

The first phase of the long-awaited local government (LG) elections in Punjab and Sindh will be held on October 12, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced Wednesday – a day after the Supreme Court admonished the ECP for failing to fulfill its constitutional obligation.

Polls in 12 districts of Punjab and 13 districts of Sindh will now take place a month earlier than the date the ECP had proposed in the tentative schedule submitted to the Supreme Court last week.

Certain it would miss the top court’s September 20 deadline for holding LG elections in Punjab and Sindh, the ECP on August 12 submitted a timeline proposing the polls be held in three phases, starting on November 11 and concluding on December 19.

However, the court, when it took up the case on Tuesday, admonished both the top poll supervisory body and the governments of the two provinces for repeatedly postponing the elections under one pretext or another.



Following the criticism, the commission decided in its Wednesday’s meeting to move the first phase of the elections back by a month and identified the districts where polls will be held in the first phase. The ECP will issue the schedule for the first phase of the LG elections on August 12, an official handout said. Dates for the second and third phases will be announced later, it added.

The 12 districts in Punjab where elections will be held are Lodhran, Vehari, Okara, Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Toba Tek Singh, Sargodha, Kasur, Nankana Sahib, Gujrat, Rawalpindi and Attock. The 13 Sindh districts earmarked for the first phase are Matiari, Tando Allahyar, Tando Muhammad Khan, Thatta, Sujawal, Badin, Hyderabad, Dadu, Jamshoro, Khairpur, Larkana, Shikarpur and Qamar Shahdadkot.

It is unclear why the ECP omitted Lahore and Karachi from the list of districts earmarked for the first phase of LG polls. When they sought the Supreme Court’s permission to postpone the elections earlier this month, the ECP and Punjab and Sindh governments had used the recent floods in both provinces as basis for their request. Both Lahore and Karachi were unaffected by the monsoon floods.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2015.