LAHORE: The Punjab government has failed to finalise the Punjab Local Government Act (PLGA) despite consuming considerable time and several extensions to it, while the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has yet again asked the provincial authorities to apprise it of the latest situation regarding the enactment of the PLGA 2024.

In the absence of the PLGA 2024, the Punjab government is also not able to carry out delimitation of union councils (UCs).

The ECP had in the last week of June summoned the Punjab chief secretary and the Punjab Local Government and Community Development (LG&CD) department secretary, seeking explanation as to why the law had not been enacted.

The commission had also directed the Punjab government to expedite all processes and hold the much-awaited local government elections in the province at the earliest.

The chief secretary and the local government secretary had sought a four-week extension and committed that the law would be vetted and approved for ultimately tabling in the Punjab Assembly.

The two officials had informed the commission that the law was almost ready and would be vetted and moved to the provincial cabinet.

However, in the absence of any positive response back, the commission’s Punjab chapter has written a letter to the LG&CD secretary, asking him to provide an update regarding the PLGA 2024 – as the time it had sought was over.

The ECP has been asking the Punjab government to hold local government polls in the province for years, but it has so far failed to enact the law and did not even carry out the UCs’ delimitation.

The ECP, Punjab, in its latest letter to the LG&CD secretary stated that the ECP, Islamabad, had acceded to the department’s request and granted it another four weeks to finalise legislation regarding the PLGA.

“It is requested that the latest position regarding enactment of the new PLGA 2024 may kindly be apprised to the provincial commission chapter for onward transmission to the ECP,” the letter reads.

The LG&CD had prepared a new draft PLGA 2024 to hold local government polls and sent it to the law department for vetting earlier this month.

The proposed law recommends to declare divisional headquarters and cities having more than 700,000 population as metropolitan corporations; the cities having 200,000 to 700,000 population be declared municipal corporations; the cities having 50,000 to 200,000 population will have municipal committees; areas having 20,000 to 50,000 population town committees, while union councils be delimited having less than 20,000 population.

It proposes that UCs will have eight general and seven reserved seats each for different categories. The member getting the highest number of votes will become chairman and the runner-up as vice-chairman in each UC.

Under the proposed law, the UC’s elected chairmen and vice-chairmen will become members

of the higher tiers of the local government system and the electorate for the offices of cities chairmen or mayors.

It envisages Lahore as a metropolitan corporation, while all 40 other districts will have district councils. In Lahore, there will be 10 towns, including one cantonment; and 300 UCs.

The local government department is also required to frame rules for delimitation of constituencies and delimit the UCs in due course of time.

The LG&CD is currently silent over the latest position on the finalisation and enactment of the PLGA 2024. The local government secretary was not available for his comments.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2024