LAHORE:
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has formally withdrawn the schedule for Punjab’s local government elections, confirming The Express PAkGazette’s earlier report that the passage of the Punjab Local Government Act, 2025 would once again derail grassroots democracy in the province.
In a meeting chaired by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja, the ECP reviewed the situation arising out of the promulgation of the new law.
The members of the commission, together with the secretary and senior officials, were briefed in detail about the legal and administrative implications of the ongoing electoral process.
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According to an official statement, the Punjab Assembly’s passage and governor’s consent to the Act, 2025 has effectively repealed the Punjab Local Government Act, 2022, under which the ECP had already started delimitations.
Once the previous law was annulled, the commission decided to retract the delimitation schedule announced in September for the elections scheduled for December.
“The schedule of local government elections in Punjab has been withdrawn,” the ECP said in its statement. “The Punjab government has been given four weeks to formulate delimitation and demarcation rules under the Act, 2025. No further extensions will be granted.”
Officials confirmed that the decision was taken at the request of the Punjab government, which asked for additional time to prepare rules and finalize administrative arrangements under the new legislation.
All boundary work across the province has been halted until the new framework is completed.
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The ECP further noted that if the Punjab government does not bring the rules within four weeks, the matter would be taken up for further review and direction.
The decision validates The Express PAkGazette’s report on October 13, which warned that the hasty passage of the Punjab Local Government Act, 2025 had “thrown the ongoing delimitation process and elections scheduled for December into limbo”.
That report also details how the law was pushed through amid opposition uproar, with critics accusing Treasury benches of deliberately delaying elections and undermining local governance.
With the formal confirmation of the ECP, Punjab’s local government elections now face an indefinite delay, the fourth such postponement in about a decade. The province last held local elections in 2015 under the 2013 Act.
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The 2019 PTI legislation dissolved those elected bodies prematurely, promising a new system that never materialized. After the overthrow of the PTI, the PML-N-led coalition passed Law 2022, which also failed to hold elections amid administrative and procedural disputes.
Analysts say the recurring cycle of legislative changes has eroded public confidence in the political commitment to decentralized governance. They maintain that successive governments, regardless of party, have used legal maneuvers to retain the financial and administrative control that constitutionally belongs to local institutions.
“The government keeps rewriting the law to buy time and maintain power at the top,” said a political observer familiar with Punjab’s local government system. “This pattern has effectively sidelined the idea of grassroots democracy.”
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For Punjab’s 120 million residents, the continued absence of elected local representatives means that day-to-day civic issues – sanitation, zoning and development planning – remain in bureaucratic hands rather than responsible public offices.
For now, all eyes are on the Punjab government’s ability to finalize the delimitation rules within the four-week deadline. Whether this latest reform leads to elections or resets the clock once again will test the province’s long-held promise to restore local democracy.
Punjab Governor informed about LG Law 2025
Meanwhile, the Punjab Governor was informed about the newly passed Local Government Act, 2025, a law that forced the ECP to postpone elections in the province.
Punjab Special Secretary Local Government Arshad Baig asked Punjab Governor Sardar Saleem Haider Khan at Governor House Lahore to give full confidence in the five-year Local Government Act 2025.
During the briefing, the special secretary said the tenure of the local bodies would be five years. He said that under Law 2025, each union council would have 13 members representing a population of 25,000 people, including nine directly elected councilors and four reserved seats.
The reserved seats will be for a woman, a young person, a worker and a minority. The names of the president and vice president will be chosen through internal elections of the union council. He said that elected members must join one or the other political party within a month, while in the union council the district system should be abolished.
On the occasion, the governor said that devolution of powers to the grassroots and provision of basic services to the people should be the top priority of the government. He said devolution of powers to the people is the objective of the PPP.
The Punjab Governor said that the local government system is the foundation of any democratic system. He said local government elections are the need of the hour.
The governor said that with the implementation of the Local Government Law of 2025, the level of union councils will be expanded and funds will be transferred. He further said that the PPP is a popular party and brings its workers and activists to the corridors of power. The governor expressed hope that local government elections would be held soon in the province.
Apparently without realizing it, PPP was caught off guard with this decision. Some in the PPP saw an extraterrestrial hand in the postponement of these elections.
A leader opined that delaying the elections at this time does not make sense as the PTI is in chains and there is no real competitor.
