Uncertain local governments

THE battle between the Election Commission of Pakistan and the provincial and federal governments has been an almost permanent feature of Pakistan’s electoral scene since 2010, when the responsibility for holding local government elections was entrusted to the Commission under the 18th Amendment.

Currently, the ECP is fighting a four-way battle — with the provincial governments of Punjab and KP, the federal government, and the cantonment boards — for LG elections in the two provinces, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), and the cantonment boards.

The LGs in Sindh and Balochistan (except in the largest district of Quetta, where the entire term passed without election) have yet to complete their terms.

The ICT LG election is the most disappointing case. The last LG election in ICT was held in November 2015. Its five-year term ended on Feb 14, 2021.

Under the Elections Act, 2017, the new election was to take place within 120 days after the previous LGs’ term ended, making June 15, 2021, the due date for the next election.

For more than five years, the ECP and the federal government have been haggling over legal points and the possible date of the next election. Since 2021, the ECP has issued the election schedule four times and carried out fresh delimitation five times. Each time it has had to eat humble pie by withdrawing the schedule as the federal government changed the goalposts and amended the LG election law.

The latest in the series was the ICT Local Government (Amendment) Ordinance, 2026, promulgated on Jan 10, 2026, which drastically changed the capital’s LG system. However, the ordinance lapsed in September 2026.

While parliament is going through the motions of converting the lapsed ordinance into an act of parliament, the ECP maintains that the old ICTLGA, 2015, stands resurrected after the ordinance lapsed and, therefore, issued a polling schedule on Oct 25, fixing Dec 20 as polling day.

Looking back at the federal government’s track record, the new act is likely to pass in the next few days, after which the ECP would have no choice but to withdraw the schedule and begin preparations anew.

The case of KP is not very different; the terms of the LGs expired on June 19, 2026, after which new elections should have taken place by Oct 20, but the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government (Amendment) Act, 2026,was passedand became effective on July 16 this year. It changed the size of the village and neighbourhood councils. The ECP strongly objected to the amendment, termed it a delaying tactic, and asked the provincial government to review the law.

In the meantime, the ECP is proceeding with preparations to hold the LG polls, except in 12 districts where the law and order situation doesn’t permit polls. The ECP has yet to issue an election schedule. Still, it remains to be seen whether the National Assembly, which has the legislative powers of the KP Assembly after the proclamation of emergency, will amend the LG law or whether the elections will be postponed yet again on some pretext or the other.

The ECP is battling both the federal and provincial governments that are reluctant to hold LG polls.

All formalities for holding the LG election in Punjab have been completed by the ECP and the Punjab government under the Punjab Local Government Act, 2025. If finally held, this will be the first LG election in roughly 11 years.

The election was supposed to be held in May 2022, but a series of new laws and amendments kept postponing it. Although the Punjab government ministerial committee and the ECP agreed to hold the election in three phases between Dec 15 and Jan 15, the Punjab government changed its mind and asked the ECP to defer the election until April 2027 because of dense fog and school exams in December. The ECP immediately rejected the new dates and asked its secretariat to prepare an election schedule based on the earlier agreed dates. The election schedule has not yet been issued; one should wait to see which side blinks first.

The election to 43 cantonment boards in the country was due on Aug 8 as the four-year term of the previously elected boards expired on April 11, 2026. The cantonment boards’ election has an additional prerequisite: the ECP should receive the federal government’s request before holding the election. Reportedly, no such request has been received, and the ECP, given the legal requirement to hold elections within 120 days of the expiry of the term, is trying to reach out to the federal government. Regardless of the outcome of these efforts, the election to the cantonment boards is also overdue.

These four stories lead to a single conclusion: both the federal and provincial governments are reluctant to hold LG elections on one pretext or another.

The key flaw in the system is that while the ECP is responsible for holding LG elections, the governments and their legislatures alone write the LG laws. There is no bar on legislatures amending LG laws. As demonstrated repeatedly, the law can be amended after the announcement of the election schedule and even a few days before polling day, undoing all the preparation made by the ECP such as delimiting LG boundaries.

The solution is for parliament to amend the Elections Act, 2017, and bar any amendment to the LG laws after the expiry of the LG term, so the ECP can prepare unimpeded and hold timely elections.

As if these difficulties were not enough to make the future of LGs uncertain, another layer of unpredictability has been added by the possibility of carving out new provinces and, in the case of ICT, by the announcement that Islamabad may soon have provincial status. This may give the government yet another pretext to slow-walk LG elections.

The writer is the president of Pakistan-based think tank Pildat.president@pildat.org

X: @ABMPildat

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2026