LAHORE: The Punjab government has gazette notified the newly promulgated Punjab Local Government Act (PLGA) 2025, leading the Election Commission of Pakistan to withdraw its order of beginning the process of ‘long overdue’ local government elections under the PLGA 2022 which now stands repealed.

The ECP had launched its delimitation process in the province from Oct 9 and announced holding the elections in the last week of December this year under the 2022 law.

In the new situation, the election commission will start the process of demarcation and delimitation afresh.

However, the ECP has nowhere mentioned that the elections would be delayed, confirms a senior officer of the Punjab local government and community development department.

The ECP’s order says: “The Oct 9 notification for carrying out delimitation, appointment of delimitation committees and delimitation authorities and directives for ceasing of existing administrative boundaries in Punjab are hereby withdrawn with immediate effect and until further orders.”

LG polls may delay as ECP scraps delimitation under repealed PLGA 2022; PTI decides to challenge new Act

Sources, however, say the Punjab government has again approached the ECP to allow some four weeks time to prepare itself in the mode of implementing the law. The Punjab government had taken months and months of time on one pretext or another for the past several years in finalising the new local government law.

Only after the ECP’s strong intervention and announcement to hold local government elections under the PLGA 2022 in the last week of December, the Punjab government got the new PLGA 2025 steamrolled from the Punjab Assembly in a matter of just five days.

While the opposition PTI is vocal enough to say the new law is a sheer violation of the Article 140 of the constitution, it has now decided to challenge the law in the court of law. The PTI legislators, it is learnt, held a detailed discussion with the party lawyers on Wednesday and agreed to challenge the new Act in the court.

The Article 140 says, “Each province shall, by law, establish a local government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments”.

The PLGA 2025’s Chapter XIV “Election Method and Franchise” for all practical purposes explain that the election would be held on non-party basis – leading the election symbol-less Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf to be wiped out of the local governments set-up.

The chapter’s clause (5) says: The returned candidates may join a political party within 30 days of the publication in the official gazette of their names. Terming the clause as undemocratic, the opposition fears its every returned candidate will be pressured by the incumbent government’s administrative hand to join the ruling party.

The Act also says the newly elected bodies would establish joint authorities and District Municipal Coordination Forum having civil bureaucracy functionaries holding administrative and financial powers.

In the new law, the Punjab government has agreed to establish a Local Government Commission and a Local Government Finance Commission offering administrative powers to the two relevant ministers as well as local government and finance department secretaries, respectively, to exercise administrative and financial powers.

On the other hand, the PTI says the law requires that a speaker in the local government, chairpersons of district authorities and heads of tehsils will rotate after every four-month tenure leaving no room for the local government bodies to work on a sustainable basis. A PTI leader suggested that the civil bureaucracy should also suggest administrative secretaries and other administrative officers’ tenure to be reduced to four months, as it found the four-month tenure functional for local governments’ speakers.

In the clause 24, the government has empowered the provincial government to assign any function to a local government which is not included in its power and functions”.

Answering a question, a PTI legislator agreed that the party leaders did not work towards restoring the political entity of the party during the past two years and now again groping in the dark while the local government elections are round the corner.

“The party is now working to find a solution to restore the election symbol as well as doing collective thinking on how to pitch its candidates in the upcoming LG elections,” the party legislator said.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2025