LG polls in Islamabad fixed for November 30

ECPs notifies new schedule two months after it recalled earlier one

ISLAMABAD: The first ever local government (LG) elections in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) – which comprises Islamabad city and adjoining rural areas – will now be held on November 30, the top electoral body announced on Friday.

The Supreme Court, in an order issued in March this year, had asked the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to conduct the LG polls in the ICT by July 25. This deadline, which came after several others, was, however, missed as the LG legislation on the ICT was still pending before the Senate.

On July 8, the court, on the request of the ECP, allowed the commission to issue a revised schedule. The SC took up the matter once again on Thursday and ordered ECP to issue fresh schedule by Friday, which the ECP notified almost two months after it recalled the earlier schedule.

According to the schedule, the returning officers (ROs) will start giving nomination forms to intending participants from October 15. The nomination forms along with necessary documents would be submitted from October 24 to 27.

The ROs will conduct scrutiny of applications from October 31 to November 4. Any  appeals against the decisions of ROs could be filed within next two days. A final list of the candidates would be published on November 11 while November 30 has been fixed as polling day. Official results will be announced on November 3.

Along with schedule for the polls, the ECP has also notified schedule to amend the boundaries of the ICT’s local councils. The delimitation schedule says that delimitation officers will prepare preliminary list of constituencies along with their boundaries from August 29 to September 22. These lists will be made public from September 26 to September 30.

During this display period anyone having objection against marked boundaries would be asked to approach the delimitation tribunals. The delimitation tribunals would dispose of petitions by October 11. Final delimitations would be notified after three days on October 13.

The process of re-marking of boundaries would complete on October 13, going side by side with other steps necessary for polls before the polling day. However, it is not clear how this new strategy will work for the ECP.

Mostly, delimitations marked initially are challenged in the courts of law by political parties which feel that these marking will damage their vote bank. Final adjudication of such cases sometimes takes months if they land in higher courts.

Local government elections throughout the country were due since 2009. However, for Islamabad it will be for the first time that urban areas would have a local government system, if the polls are held this time. Since its establishment as capital in the early 1960s, elections for local councils have been held only once and that too for rural areas back in 1992.

After the retirement of former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who took up the case of delay in the holding of LG polls back in 2013, Justice Jawwad S Khawaja, who became Chief Justice of Pakistan recently, has been actively pursuing the matter.

The court had reprimanded the ECP, provincial and federal governments for not devolving powers to local governments as stipulated in the Constitution.

The LG polls were held in Balochistan in December 2013, and in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) in May this year. However, LG elections in Punjab and Sindh will be held in three phases. The polling for the first phase is scheduled for October 31.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2015.