PESHAWAR: Some technical complications faced by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government have been hindering it to give final date for the local government elections and the Supreme Court is insisting it to hold the polls at the earliest.
The local government department of the provincial government is, however, committed to obey the decision of the apex court and find out some solution to the matter in consultation with legal experts. “We highly respect the honourable court and would follow its commands whatever they are. But I believe the court should understand our condition. Our position is totally changed from the other provinces — Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan,” said provincial minister for local governments and rural developments Inayatullah Khan, while talking to The News.
He said that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was voted to power with the slogan of change and they wanted to devolve powers to the grassroots and for the purpose they needed some fresh legislation. “The problem with us was that we, unlike other provinces, inherited Local Government Act 2012, which had some serious lacunas hampering true devolution,” he said.
In order to overcome the flaws in the Act, the provincial government moved a bill in the provincial assembly, which the house referred to a select committee so that it could be unanimously adopted as an Act, he said. “Now, if the Supreme Court issues orders for polls, we would have consultations with legal experts to get an ordinance promulgated and implement the court’s directives,” he said.
Apart from the complications in legislation, a number of other technical problems would make it difficult for the provincial government and the election commission to hold elections at a short notice. The provincial government, according to the draft legislation, has proposed three-tier local government system — village council, tehsil/town council and district council — and delimitation would have to be made for the purpose.
The local government department, according to sources, has already been having extensive consultations with the election commission for holding the local government elections at the earliest. An official at the election commission told The News that if they were given go-ahead for holding election right now, it would take at least three months to get prepared for the elections.
A senior official at the local government department was of the opinion that eight hours are given for polling at the general elections wherein one voter has to cast only two ballots - one each for the national and provincial assemblies. Whereas in the elections for the local bodies, the voters would have to cast at least six votes, which would mean giving extra time of at least 16 hours to them and this of course is not possible, he argued. The turnout at the local government election also remains high, he added.
Therefore, in order to cover the gap, extra polling stations would have to be arranged, which would mean providing more security, polling staff and logistics, he said. All this cannot be arranged in the shortest span of time, he maintained.
