ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday withdrew the delimitation schedule for the much-delayed local government elections in Punjab issued under a 2022 local government law, giving the provincial government four weeks to finalise the delimitation and demarcation rules in light of a new law that came into effect earlier this month.

On Oct 8, the ECP ordered LG polls in December and asked Punjab to immediately start the delimitation exercise and complete the same within two months.

“Thereafter, the election programme should be announced, and the election should be held in the last week of December 2025. The office is expected to follow the timelines strictly,” the Oct 8 order said.

This order, however, was reversed in a meeting chaired by Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja on Tuesday, in light of the new law, after a request by the Punjab government.

Commission asks province to finalise delimitation rules in four weeks after new law; warns of ‘appropriate decision’ in case of delay

During the meeting, the ECP secretary said that the Punjab Assembly had passed the Punjab Local Government Act 2025, which has also been approved by the governor.

“With the passage of the new act, the Punjab Local Government Act 2022 has been repealed, and the notifications issued under the 2022 Act regarding delimitations should be withdrawn,” the ECP said in a statement, while halting the delimitation exercise and dropping the plan to hold LG polls in the province this year. The ECP said no further extension will be granted, saying if the task was not completed within the given timeframe, the matter would be reviewed at a hearing and an appropriate decision would be made.

Observers believed the fresh decision could lead to an indefinite delay in the polls, given there were no “constitutional compulsions” to establish the local government systems.

Muddassir Rizvi of Fafen believed that the local governments are “clearly not a priority of the Punjab government, nor is there any constitutional compulsion” to ensure their perpetuity.

“Article 140-A only binds the government to establish local governments but it doesn’t have any provision for the perpetuity of these governments, periodicity of elections, tenure of governments, tier of decentralisation, subjects that must be decentralised, etc,” he said.

In 2019, the then PTI-led Punjab government dissolved the local government institutions, which were later restored by the SC and subsequently completed their term on Dec 31, 2021. That means the elections were supposed to be held by the end of April 2022. Under Article 140-A of the Constitution and Section 219(4) of the Elections Act, the ECP is bound to hold polls within 120 days of the expiry of the term of the local government institutions.

PTI parliamentary leader in the Senate, Barrister Syed Ali Zafar, criticised the ECP for failing in “discharging its constitutional responsibility by postponing the local bodies’ elections on the flimsy pretext that it requires more time to make adjustments following amendments made by the Punjab government”.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2025