ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court asked the Election Commission of Pakistan and Punjab and Sindh governments on Tuesday to sit together and come up with agreed dates for holding the local bodies’ elections in the two provinces.

A three-judge bench headed by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja had taken up a petition filed by the ECP seeking permission to delay the elections in Punjab and Sindh for at least 30 days.

The elections are scheduled to be held on Sept 26.

Take a look: ECP files petition in SC to delay LG polls in Sindh, Punjab

The ECP said in the petition that the election process could not be initiated till the recent floods in certain districts subsided because most of the affected people, their household and animals were accommodated in government buildings.

The court asked Advocate General of Punjab Malik Naveed Rasool and Advocate Munir Paracha representing the ECP to satisfy it on the need to delay the elections by coming up with recommendations and suggestions.

Advocate Paracha suggested to the court that he was ready to sit with the two provincial governments to propose a new date for the polls.

The Punjab and Sindh governments should seek an apology from the people for not handing over to them the constitutional right of being governed through elected representatives at local level, Justice Khawaja said, adding that seeking apology from the people became all the more important because the governments in power in the two provinces were the same when the local bodies were dissolved in 2009.

The court praised Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan for holding the elections despite the fact that they were governed by different governments when the local bodies were dissolved.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2015

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