LAHORE:
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has formally withdrawn the schedule for Punjab’s local government elections, confirming The Express Pakinomist’s earlier report that the passage of the Punjab Local Government Act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 passage of the new law.
Members of the commission along with the secretary and senior officials were briefed in detail about the legal and administrative implications of the ongoing election process.
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According to an official statement, the Punjab Assembly’s passage and Governor’s assent to the 2025 Act effectively repealed the Punjab Local Government Act 2022, under which the ECP had already begun delimitations.
With the previous law now repealed, the commission decided to withdraw the delimitation plan announced in September for the scheduled December election.
“The schedule for local government elections in Punjab has been withdrawn,” the ECP said in its statement. “Punjab government has been given four weeks to prepare delimitation and delimitation rules under the 2025 Act. No further extensions will be given.”
Officials confirmed that the decision was taken at the request of the Punjab government, which sought additional time to prepare rules and finalize administrative arrangements under the new legislation.
All demarcation work across the province is now halted until the new framework is complete.
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The ECP further noted that if the Punjab government fails to submit the rules within four weeks, the matter will be taken up again for review and further guidance.
The decision validates The Express Pakinomist’s October 13 report, which warned that the hasty passage of the Punjab Local Government Act 2025 had “thrown the ongoing delimitation process and scheduled December elections into limbo”.
The report also described how the law was pushed through amid opposition uproar, with critics accusing the Treasury of deliberately delaying votes and undermining local governance.
With the ECP’s formal confirmation, 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 law.
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PTI’s 2019 legislation dissolved these elected bodies prematurely and promised a new system that never materialized. After the PTI’s dismissal, the PML-N-led coalition passed the 2022 Act, which also failed to lead to 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 argue that successive governments, regardless of party, have used legal maneuvering to preserve financial and administrative control that constitutionally belongs to local institutions.
“The government keeps rewriting the law to buy time and keep 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 people, 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 accountable 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 will test the province’s long-standing promise to restore local democracy.
