PESHAWAR: The chairmen and mayors of tehsil councils, to be elected on party basis in the new local government system, are likely to face tough time in passing annual budgets from the councils elected on non-party basis, according to sources.

With abolition of the district tier of the local government system, the vital tier will be tehsil council but its composition will be strange as mentioned in the law, says officials and local government representatives.

In the existing system, the district and tehsil councils are divided into treasury and opposition benches, representing political parties. Being in majority, passage of budget was not an issue for the nazims, they said.

Partisan mayors and chairmen will be elected by non-party tehsil councils

However, in the new system, the chairmen and mayors would be directly elected from the entire tehsil. The chairmen of the village and neighbourhood councils will be members of the respective tehsil councils and they will be elected on non-party basis.

Section 21 (2) of the recently amended Local Government Act, 2013 states: “The chairman, Tehsil Local Government shall be directly elected on party-based elections, held on the basis of adult franchise and joint electorate, with the whole of tehsil as single constituency for this purpose.”

If a chairman or mayor fails to pass the annual budget from a tehsil council, then the budget will be passed by the provincial local government commission.

Section 35 (7) of the Act says: “In case a budget is not approved by the local council, in terms of sub-section (2), within 10 days of its presentation or the council rejects the budget with a simple majority of its total membership, the chairman shall submit the budget to the local government commission through the department (local government) for consideration and the LGC shall convey the approval within thirty days. The decision of the LGC shall be final.”

Officials and representatives of local government said that the local government commission could amend the same budget by incorporating anything in it. Such budgets might not be in the interest of the public at large, they said.

In this connection, Section 35 (8) of the Act states: “The LGC or, as the case may be,

the committee notified for the purpose by it shall review and approve, with or without amendments, a budget for the local government and the budget so approved shall be considered a budget approved in terms of Sub-section (2).”

Mohammad Ali Arbab, the nazim of Town-III, told Dawn that 21 of the 31 members of his council belonged to his party, PTI. He said that he didn’t face any problem in passage of annual budgets as PTI was in majority.

However, he said that chairmen and mayors would face problems to pass budget in the new local government system as the council members would be elected on non-party basis while their head would represent a political party.

“There will be no treasury and opposition benches. There would be a lot of issues to run the council,” said the nazim.

Local Council Association president Himayatullah Mayar, when contacted, said what would be the utility of the tehsil council if its rejected budget was passed by the local government commission.

In the existing system, he said, if a nazim couldn’t pass budget from the council, then he was bound under the law to take confidence vote from the respective council but there was no such provision in the upcoming local government system.

Minister for Local Government Shahram Khan Tarakai told Dawn that chairman or mayor would be a political person and would be able to handle 30 to 40 members of the tehsil council.

“The councillors of the tehsil council will also be chairmen of the village and neighbourhood councils and would get handsome budget from there as well,” he said.

The minister said that in the new local government system, the chairmen and mayors would definitely think for the betterment of the respective tehsil otherwise the councillors having no party affiliation would give though time to them.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2019