2 weeks Ago By JAVAID UR RAHMAN
ISLAMABAD - The ruling clique’s legislation in haste is always considered doubtful. The governments, in any era, enjoying the majority never hesitate to bulldoze the bill. The parliamentary history is filled with examples of passing legislation with numerical strength and making it ‘act of parliament’ in a short time period.
The bill adopted by both the houses [National Assembly and Senate] becomes ‘act of parliament’ after the ceremonial assent by the President. Recently, the ruling parties separately passed the ‘Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government (Amendment) Bill 2024’ from both the houses dubbed as an attempt to postpone the in the federal capital ,scheduled to be held on October 09. The proposed amendment mainly seeks to increase the number of general members, from six to nine, in each of Islamabad’s 125 union councils.
This simply means that a new delimitation of constituencies will be required which cannot be completed in a week or so. The law binds the top electoral watchdog to immediately launch the delimitation exercise for Local Government (LG polls) afresh, in order to match the criteria after the increased number of general members or wards in the UCs. The election regulatory body had earlier launched the delimitation exercise for the ICT around three months ago to complete it by July23.
The ECP had revised its schedule to conduct the polls on October 09 but there are once again faint chances to hold the polls in the second week of October. The term of the local government expired around three years ago [February 2021]. The top election regulatory authority, around three months ago, once again had started the preparation of a preliminary list of the UCs in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) from June 1 and now the twice postponed were scheduled in October.
At present, this local government system is functional in three provinces [Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan]. However, the provincial election body has failed to hold these polls in ICT and Punjab due to separate reasons. The polls, under Section 219(4) of the Elections Act 2017, is constitutionally necessary to be held within the 120-day stipulated period upon the expiry of respective terms.
The opposition parties, in both the houses of the parliament,had registered their strong protest and blamed the government for deliberately delaying the polls. Expressing reservations, PTI’s chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan on the floor of the parliament had said “If this legislation was imperative it should be stopped for the time being as the elections schedule had already been announced,”. Political observers viewed that the government is unlikely to conduct polls as it feels itself uncomfortable to win seats in the federal capital.
Some other reasons including IMF’s pressure of financial constraints in the country. It could also be in the mind that there will be no fast decision making track in the presence of implementing the Local Government system in the federal capital system. The matter has now been left in limbo as the electoral watchdog in a couple of days may announce to postpone the polls.
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