PUNJAB’S frequently aborted devolution plan seems to have restarted once again. The delimitation process is underway, the ECP is engaging with the provincial government for a schedule, and an ordinance is currently being deliberated upon for conversion into an act of the assembly. There is no doubt that much of this is being done under the pressure of the higher judiciary, which has on many occasions remained the only actor interested in the safeguarding of Article 140-A of the Constitution.

Following the first phase of elections in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the PTI government in Punjab has found itself constrained by both judicial pressure as well as some internal advocacy on initiating devolution to local governments. The last attempt was in 2019, when a radically different piece of legislation was prepared, only to be sent to cold storage. This was shortly followed by the much delayed restoration of the local governments elected in the 2015 exercise. With their term ending at the end of last year, the province finds itself back with an opportunity to start afresh.

At the outset it’s worth asserting that, at this stage, any form of devolution is welcome. The centralisation of political and bureaucratic authority at the provincial tier in both Punjab and Sindh has led to a range of unnecessary and counterproductive interventions in basic areas of service delivery. Development authorities are being managed by provincial governments in a largely unaccountable manner. New entities are created each day, staffed mostly with civil servants, to take on municipal functions. Regulatory oversight remains non-existent, while participation is limited to the presence of provincial legislators on various boards.

In the Imrana Tiwana case, as well as the recent cases of RUDA (Ravi Urban Development Authority) and the MQM petition, the court has ruled that municipal functions cannot be usurped by provincial governments endlessly. This provides an important opening (albeit a fragile one) for more substantive forms of devolution. The good thing is that recent legislation in Punjab — both the 2019 act as well as the 2021 ordinance — provide reasonable guarantees that local governments will retain control over developmental and regulatory functions in their jurisdictions. One hopes that the Supreme Court’s recent judgement compels the Sindh government to revise its law as well.

The key issue now is the design of the local government itself. This is particularly concerning for Punjab.

The key issue now though is the design of the local government itself. This is particularly concerning for Punjab, where the new ordinance proposes an extremely skewed and top-heavy design. The key issue, as highlighted by Dr Ali Cheema recently on these pages, is the proportion of reserved seats at the council level in metropolitan corporations as well as district councils, and, more egregiously, their method of appointment.

The ordinance states that reserved seats to the council will be elected on a joint ticket with the head of the local government, through a simple majority. Let’s take the case of Lahore as an example of what this entails. According to the First Schedule of the ordinance, Lahore will have 70 seats in its council. Of these 70 seats, 42 are on reserve categories, which also bizarrely includes a category for traders alongside the more conventional ones of women, youth, workers/peasants, minorities and differently abled citizens.

This means that citizens of Lahore will cast one vote each for a mayoral candidate, who will bring along 42 other council members in tow. This means that the winning party automatically gets a two-thirds majority in the city council. In addition to this, if for example, citizens of Lahore vote for the remaining 28 general councillors in the same party proportionate way as for the mayor, the winning party will also get an additional minimum of 14 seats, ending with 56 out of the 70. This is even well above the two-thirds they already had.

Turning the council into a rubber-stamp for the mayor, and by removing any chain of voter accountability for two-thirds of the council, is unlikely to lead to desirable results on any metric of devolution. The politics behind this is murky, but it seems the ruling coalition in Punjab is confident that it can seize a plurality of votes (all that is required) in district head elections in a number of districts.

The politics behind this ordinance is also visible in the undercutting of urban centres, and the rem­o­val of approximately 200 urban local governments (mu­nicipal corporations, municipal committees, and town committees) through their merger with rur­al heavy district councils. This is likely a funct­ion of the ruling coalition’s estimation of where their own electoral power lies, and where they are more adept at cajoling rural notables to deliver the requisite amount of votes needed to capture a council.

Responding to this criticism, some government functionaries have argued that urban local governments now exist through neighbourhood councils (under the district tier), which are roughly equivalent to the old union council tier. However, it bears mentioning that the scale at which these operate is very small and the functions granted to them by the ordinance are extremely limited. Many of the key urban functions of town planning, land regulation, tax collection and maintenance of infrastructure will be subsumed by district councils that are going to have an excess of rural representation.

A source of optimism here is that these injunctions remain open to contestation by the opposition, and provide an opening for a challenge through the judiciary as well. Such large-scale reservation in district or metropolitan councils with no accountability to voters goes against the spirit of any election-based devolution. It is incumbent on both the ruling party as well as opposition legislators in Punjab to find an amenable revision to the proposed structure. Having bipartisan consensus on what shape local governments should look like may also finally ensure their long-term sustainability.

The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums.

Twitter: @umairjav

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2022