ISLAMABAD, Oct 3: An inter-provincial meeting was informed on Thursday that holding of local government elections was not possible this year because provinces have not done basic work to conduct the exercise.

It transpired during the meeting, presided over by acting Chief Election Commissioner Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jilani, that provinces were yet to have complete delimitation, which would have to be carried out afresh on the basis of new census blocks.

ECP secretary Ishtiak Ahmad Khan told reporters that all provinces had assured the meeting of sending a requisition to the commission for holding LG elections in the first week of December after completing prerequisites for the polls in November.

And after receiving requisitions, the ECP would require one month to carry out multiple tasks before announcing the election schedule, he said.

Mr Khan said it would involve printing of 600 million ballot papers – three times more than the 2013 general elections.

He said under the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority rules, it was mandatory to give 15 days to suppliers of ballot papers to submit bids, while printing of 200m ballot papers in the general elections took about 20 days.

The ECP secretary said all provinces had expressed their desire to hold LG elections as soon as possible. Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan assemblies had adopted local government laws but Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was yet to do so, he added.

He said Sindh and Balochistan wanted to hold party-based polls, but Punjab would go for non-party based elections. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa wanted a mix of party- and non-party based elections.

A committee was set up to decide if polls should be held in phases or on the same day. ECP Additional Secretary Syed Sher Afgan will head the committee, which will comprise local government secretaries of the provinces and a representative of the interior ministry.

The committees to be set up at the provincial level will be headed by the respective provincial election commissioners. Officials of Nadra, the census department and other institutions, who will look into technical matters, will be their members.

The ECP secretary said that on the basis of recommendations of the provinces the next meeting would decide the date for LG elections.

Sources told Dawn that the chief secretary of Punjab had opposed holding of LG elections in phases.“If elections were held in 18 of the 36 districts of Punjab in the first phase, the winning party will have an advantage in the next phase,” he was quoted as saying.

The acting chief election commissioner told the meeting that ECP would make arrangements in light of legal framework, which was not yet provided to it by the provinces.

He said the legal framework included laws, notifications on rules for the conduct of general elections, and delimitation of union councils and mechanism for allotment of election symbols to the candidates, if the party-based elections were to be held.

The acting CEC said new census blocks should be made on the basis of delimitation and that while demarcating a union council, census block was not broken because it might create complications for the ECP to prepare electoral rolls.