QUETTA: Apropos of a report published in Dawn on Thursday, titled “History repeats itself as Balochistan drags feet on LG polls”, a spokesman for the provincial government has said the report “lacks identification of ground realities and facts”.

The Balochistan government was committed to holding local bodies elections in 2013, the spokesman said in a statement. And despite the worst law and order situation, the provincial government was the first in the country to hold local bodies elections. “The impression given in the newspaper regarding delay in local bodies elections lacks the identification of ground realities and facts.

“Rather, the government made a request to the Election Commission of Pakistan that certain necessary amendments were required in sections 7 and 10 of the Balochistan Local Government Act, 2010.

“Here it is imperative to mention that the previous delimitations were carried out over the population census of 1998 when the population was 6.5 million, whereas according to the census of 2017, the population is 12.34m.”

Meanwhile, the limit of Quetta Metropolitan Corporation has also been extended and some other municipal committees have been created due to the population growth, said the statement.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2019