LAHORE: Rejecting the Punjab Local Government Act 2025 as an incomplete piece of legislation enforced without taking stakeholders onboard, the Pakistan Democratic Alliance, a conglomerate of 26 little-known political groups, has called for constitutional amendments to give a clear and comprehensive local body election system like the national and provincial governments.

At a seminar organisd here on Sunday by the alliance, various speakers demanded that local bodies should be given autonomy as third tier of government like the federal and provincial governments.

They also called for restricting the members of the national and provincial assemblies to legislative work and handing over all the development works to local governments, and that equal grants should be given to local bodies by the provincial governments to ensure their economic autonomy.

They suggested including the informal sector workers in the local bodies by removing the conditions of being registered with the Social Security and EOBI and being member of a trade union to fight for reserved seats of labourers. Likewise, landless peasants and tenants should be preferred for the seats reserved for farmers.

Regretting that despite constituting half of the country’s population only one seat has been reserved for womenfolk at union council level in the act, they demanded increasing the quota as per women population and ensuring this quota at chairperson and deputy chairperson level too.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2026