ISLAMABAD: The government of Punjab has promulgated an ordinance to amend the law for reducing the number of ballot papers to be printed for the next local government elections in the province.

An official of the Election Commission of Pakistan told Dawn on Thursday that earlier about 350 million ballot papers were estimated to be printed, but now the number had been cut to 100.22m.

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Under Section 13 of the Punjab Local Government Act, 2013, a union council was to comprise a directly elected chairman and vice chairman as joint candidates, six general members while it provided for direct elections on four different categories of reserved seats.

The reserved seats included two women and one peasant in a rural union council or one worker, one youth and one non-Muslim in an urban union council where at least 200 non-Muslim voters were registered.

That means that each voter was to get six ballot papers.

But under the amended law, only the chairman and vice chairman as joint candidates and one member each from a ward of the union council will be directly elected while candidates on reserved seats will be indirectly elected by the chairman, vice chairman and general members.

The official said the ECP would now need to get two different ballot papers printed for each of 50.11m registered voters. The number of male voters in the province is 28.16m and female 21.95m.

He said a union council would be divided into six wards. Previously, six general members were to be elected from each union council. The number of general seats would remain unchanged, but one member each would be elected from a ward.

Under Section 18 of the Punjab Local Government Act, election of members of local governments was to be held on the non-party basis, but the amended law has substituted this section to provide for party-based polls.

According to Section 13(2) of the amended Act, “The election commission shall hold local government elections on party basis by allotting symbols to candidates of political parties in the prescribed manner.”

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2015

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