LAHORE: Seemingly in a bid to postpone the local government elections, the Punjab government is employing delaying tactics in the provision of required information to the Election Commission of Pakistan for the purpose.

A meeting of the ECP was informed on Wednesday that the Punjab government had sought further postponement in the publication of initial demarcation for village and neighbourhood councils on the excuse that it could not yet finalise names of the entities.

Chaired by Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja and attended by members, secretary, DG (law) and other senior officers of the ECP, it observed that the Commission had given Oct 13 deadline for completing the naming process by delaying publication of demarcation.

The meeting observed that the communiqué seeking further delay was vague as it didn’t mention any time-frame or final deadline for the approval of the names and decided to write to the authorities on all these issues as the ECP is bound to conduct the elections within the time-frame given by the Constitution and law.

The Commission noted that the Punjab government’s committee regarding the local body polls had been directed by the ECP on Aug 5, 2020 to fix suitable dates for holding upper tier elections for village and neighbourhood councils and inform the Election Commission accordingly but no appropriate response has been received yet despite repeated reminders.

The meeting was of the considered opinion that as there’s no need for demarcation of electoral units (constituencies) for upper tier polls and the ECP has already notified the same under section 84 of the Punjab Local Government Act, 2019, therefore, there’s no legal justification for further delaying the electoral exercise.

It also observed that despite repeated reminders neither the Federal Ministry of Law & Justice nor the Parliamentary Affairs ministry has shown any progress vis-à-vis official release of the final statistics of last census that’s one of the hurdles in holding the local polls. It was decided to send yet another letter to both the ministries as well as invite their respective secretaries to the next meeting of the ECP for sorting out the issue.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2020