September 07, 2007	Friday	Sha'aban 24, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Sept 6: The Supreme Court on Thursday served notices on the federal government on a petition filed in 2002 seeking local government elections in the Islamabad Capital Territory.

A seven-member Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry issued the notices on the petition of Zahid Malik, editor-in-chief of a local newspaper, who sought local elections in ICT before the 2002 general elections were held.

Apart from the CJ, the bench comprised Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, Justice Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi, Justice Faqir Mohammad Khokhar, Justice Mian Shakirullah Jan, Justice M. Javed Buttar and Justice Raja Fayyaz Ahmed.

Senior Advocate M. Bilal told Dawn that after a brief hearing the court issued notices to the federal government through Secretary Local Government and Rural Development, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) and Chief Commissioner Islamabad.

Zahid Malik has pleaded that an elected local government, similar to all major capital cities of the world, was necessary for proper administration and management of the affairs of the residents of Islamabad city.

Elections to local governments were held in all districts of the country in 2002 but Islamabad was excluded against the wishes of the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) which had devised the scheme. It recommended that the Capital Development Authority be abolished and Islamabad be governed by elected representatives.

A draft law for holding the LG polls in the federal capital was also prepared by the NRB.

The petition recalled that the government promised several times to hold local elections in Islamabad but never honoured the promise. Local councils, it said, form the first tier of self- governance and municipal administration and therefore necessary for strengthening the democratic process.

Local councils are training ground to produce political leaders of national stature, the petition said.

Article 32 of the Constitution relating to the Principles of Policy also provides that the state should encourage local council institutions composed of elected representatives of the area concerned and in such institutions special representation should be given to peasants, workers and women.

Similarly Article 7 gives the definition of the term “State” that includes local or other authorities in the country which are by law empowered to impose tax or cess.

Also the Constitution envisages democracy as ethos and a way of life in which equality of status, of opportunity, equality before law and equal protection of law obtains, the petition said.

In democracy, it added, the role of the people is to produce a government. Therefore the democratic method is an institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.

Denying the citizens of Islamabad to have a local government was a clear discrimination and infringement of fundamental rights of the residents of the capital, the petition said.