LAHORE: The Election Commission of Pakistan has yet again summoned the Punjab chief secretary and the local government and community development department secretary on Oct 22 to explain a perpetual delay in finalising the Punjab Local Government Act (PLGA).

Since the Punjab government seems least interested in holding local government elections, it is employing delaying tactics in the name of preparing and fine tuning the draft law for legislation.

The 2018-22 Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government was no exception either as it also continued `working’ on the draft law.The incumbent PML-N government missed all ECP warnings and did nothing to finalise the PLGA 2024.

The government had, in August last, sent a half-cooked draft law to the chief minister to inform the ECP that it had completed its work.

Earlier in April, Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz had constituted a 20-member committee, convened by LG&CD minister Zeeshan Rafique and school education minister Rana Sikandar Hayat, and directed it to review the proposed amendments to the existing law and present a draft of the new local government act to her within 15 days. The committee comprised 14 treasury benches MPAs and representatives of civil bureaucracy and civil society.

Since the chief minister had returned the draft law to the local government after pointing out several issues in it – from structure of the local bodies system to election methods – but the draft law is yet to be revised to put through a long process of approvals from the cabinet committee, chief minister office and eventually from the Punjab cabinet to move to the Punjab Assembly for legislation.

Sources privy to the development told Dawn the Punjab government did not intend to finalise the PLGA 2024 on fast track because it felt there were issues to be resolved before the LG elections.

Same situation was with the PTI government as it too did not come up with the PLGA and hold local government elections. “No government will dare to finalise the PLGA and go for elections until and unless it is sure that it can win the local polls,” the source said. The local government elections are due in the province since the PTI government dissolved LGs (elected during the 2013-18 PML-N rule) on May 4, 2019, and appointed deputy commissioners as administrators.

Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2024