LAHORE, Nov 9: The Punjab government on Saturday promulgated an ordinance that amended the Local Government Act 2013 and provided for party-based local bodies elections in compliance with an order of the Lahore High Court.

The ordinance was promulgated by Governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar on the advice of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

It deleted a clause of the act specifying non-party local elections in the province. After the amendment, officials said, political parties can now take part in the polls.

The ordinance included a new clause in the Local Government Act which said the recently concluded delimitation of local bodies constituencies could not be challenged in a civil court.

Sources said the clause had been introduced in anticipation of litigation over the delimitation exercise.

However, the high court has the constitutional authority to hear such cases. Earlier, the Punjab government wanted to hold non-party local government elections and had provided for it in the act despite objections from opposition parties and civil society organisations.

The opponents of the move believed that it would further divide society and lead to unrest in the province.

However, some analysts said the PML-N wanted non-party elections because it did not have an organisational set-up at grass-roots level and was not sure of its victory in party-based polls. The party will try to force a majority of winning candidates to follow its command and those offering resistance would not be allowed to freely function with the help of a strong controlling mechanism provided in the act, they feared.

The government said that since local governments were not legislative bodies, there was no need for party-based elections. It also held the view that political parties should allow people to independently take part in these elections so that they could “become their own masters”.

To the surprise of its opponents, the government welcomed the Lahore High Court’s decision and speedily promulgated the ordinance, allowing political parties to contest the elections.