LAHORE, Nov 3: Passage of the Lahore Metro Bus System law is high on the agenda of the Punjab Assembly session commencing on Monday (tomorrow).

The Punjab government’s second priority in the long list of bills is an amendment to the Punjab Local Government Ordinance 2001, which will allow the provincial government to further extend local elections for another six months.

The Punjab Local Government Bill 2012, which carries the PML-N government’s plan of a new local system of its choice, stands no chance of adoption by the provincial assembly in the current session as it is pending scrutiny by a standing committee. The bill was referred to it many months ago but it has met only once since then.

Official sources said on Saturday that this indicated government’s clear intentions of averting local elections and continuing to run the local councils through bureaucracy under the existing system which it otherwise abhors because it was given by Musharraf.

“The top priority nevertheless is the adoption of the Lahore Metro Bus System bill to legally justify the service on which the government is spending billions of rupees and which it wants to put into operation before the general election,” an official said.

Officials said the government would introduce 12 new bills that included Lahore Canal Heritage, Building Control Authority and Private Education Commission bills. It would have nearly 10 bills passed which had already been tabled; one of them was the Transplantation of Human Organs Bill.