ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Thursday summoned Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi over the delay in local government elections in the federal capital.
The term of the last local government in Islamabad expired in February 2021, and since then, elections have been delayed under various pretexts. As a result, around 2.5 million residents of Islamabad continue to face issues ranging from water shortages to unpaved streets.
A five-member ECP bench — headed by Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan Raja — took up the issue of delay in holding local government elections in Punjab and Islamabad, a press release issued via the ECP said.
During the hearing, Raja was informed that the secretary of the interior ministry had been sent three letters by the ECP, in which he was asked for “the demarcation of the town corporation, the number of union councils in each town corporation, the provision of the maps of the town corporations, as well as necessary amendments in the ordinance”.
However, ECP received no response from the ministry.
In response, the Islamabad chief commissioner said that no such letter had been received, and added that the secretary of the interior ministry was in a meeting with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
“In his place, the additional secretary appeared before the ECP,” the press release read; however, the ECP took strict notice of the secretary’s failure to respond, directing that he should be served a contempt notice.
The ECP further directed the Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi to appear at the next hearing. The Islamabad chief commissioner said that maps of the town corporation would be provided to the ECP within a week.
The ECP then set a deadline of March 12 in the matter.
Local govt polls in Punjab
The five-member bench also took up the matter of the delay in local government elections in Punjab, as per the press release.
In this regard, Punjab chief secretary and secretary local government, appeared before the ECP.
During the hearing, the Punjab chief secretary informed the ECP that the provincial government has provided “local government delimitation rules, demarcation order, which contains the number of union councils in town corporations, municipal corporations, municipal committees and tehsil councils, to the ECP”.
The secretary also informed ECP that “maps and other relevant data will be provided to the ECP by March 12, after which the provincial government will issue a notification on more election rules”.
The election commission issued directions to “immediately issue the delimitation schedule as soon as the provincial government provides the maps”.
As per the statement, the provincial government was told that upon failure to provide maps, the ECP will call the division-wise deputy commission on a daily-basis, starting March 13,” so they may be able to provide ECP the maps.
ECP adjourned the hearing till March 10.
The elections were supposed to be held on February 15. However, despite the issuance of the election schedule and the submission of thousands of nomination papers from across 125 Union Councils, the government introduced amendments to the Local Government Act.
This resulted in the cancellation of the election schedule.
The Pattan-Coalition 38 (a network of associations, community-based organisations, labour unions and human rights activists), in a research report released last month, had maintained that the repeated postponement of the local government elections in Islamabad — six times in five years — represented a direct assault on grassroots democracy and raises serious concerns about the subordination of the ECP to the executive.
