PESHAWAR: Speaker of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Babar Saleem Swati on Friday constituted a committee of lawmakers to discuss the proposed term extension for local bodies in the province.

The development comes as Chief Minister Sohail Afridi and the mayors and chairmen of city and tehsil councils agreed on discussion about legal options to allow the current setup of local bodies to function until their next elections.

The provincial government and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Council Association reached the agreement during a meeting at the Chief Minister’s House on Tuesday. The LCA later called off its protest outside the provincial assembly.

“In exercise of the powers conferred by Rule 292, read with Rule 303, of the Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Procedure and Conduct of Business Rules, 2025, the Speaker, Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has been pleased to constitute a Parliamentary Committee comprising the following members,” read a notification issued by the assembly secretariat.

Both treasury, opposition members part of committee

MPA of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Nazir Ahmad Abbasi has been made the convener of the committee, with lawmakers from the treasury and opposition benches being its members.

Treasury members include retired Major Mohammad Sajjad, Akbar Ayub Khan, Tariq Saeed, Mian Sharafat Ali, Ihtisham Ali, Mohammad Anwar Khan, Asif Khan, while the opposition parties will be represented in the panel by Ahmad Kundi of the PPP, Sajjadullah of the JUI-F, Malik Tariq Awan of the PML-N, Arbab Mohammad Waseem of the PTI (Parliamentarians) and Mohammad Nisar of the ANP.

The committee’s terms of reference declared that the panel would examine and deliberate upon the extension of the term of local bodies in the province and submit its report within three days to the speaker, while the quorum to constitute the sitting of the committee would be four.

During the meeting between the chief minister and LCA, discussions remained focused on ensuring institutional continuity, legal clarity and administrative stability within the local governance framework.

The previous local body elections were held in two phases. The tenure of local bodies elected in the first phase will expire on March 15 and that of those elected in the second phase on June 30.

The mayors and chairmen of tehsil and village and neighbourhood councils staged street protests time and again during the last few months to push the government to extend their tenure, give them legal power and release funds to them for developmental activities.

When contacted, LCA president Himayatullah Mayar said that the provincial government was bound by the KP Local Government Act, 2013, to give 20 per cent of the funds meant for the provincial Annual Development Programme to the two-tier local government system.

“The provincial government has not given a single penny to the tehsil and village and neighbourhood government for executing development schemes at grassroots levels,” said Mr Mayar, who is also mayor of the Mardan city council.

He said thatthe provincial government had deprived the tehsil and village and neighbourhood governments of Rs150 billion in the previous four years.

The LCA president said thatwith the abolition of the district tier of local bodies before elections, nine government departments, including the elementary and secondary education, agriculture extension, livestock, women development, sports, population welfare, social welfare and public health engineering, were devolved to the tehsil level.

He complained that the provincial government had failed to establish offices and other arrangements for the devolved departments though the tenure of local bodies was about to end.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2026