Despite unambiguous SC order: Punjab govt dragging its feet on allowing LGs to resume functioning

ISLAMABAD: Despite an unambiguous order by the Supreme Court, the Punjab government is dragging its feet over allowing the restored mayors, chairmen and local government councils to assume their offices in Punjab.

“If we are not allowed to take control of local governments as ordered by the apex court, we will certainly file a contempt of court plea,” reinstated Rawalpindi Mayor Sardar Naseem told The News. He said the Punjab authorities were giving lame excuses and creating hurdles in permitting the mayors, chairmen and councillors to resume their functions.

The March 25 short order of the three-judge bench of the Supreme Court that reinstated the local councils said that the “local governments as were existing in Punjab prior to the promulgation of Section 3 of the Punjab Local Government Act, 2019 stand restored and will complete their term in accordance with the law.”

The Punjab government had dissolved the local governments under Section 3, which was declared ultra vires of the Constitution by the apex court.

Sardar Nasim said one excuse being unofficially given by the authorities for the delay was that the structure of the local councils has been changed and some tiers have been abolished while some new ones introduced. The Punjab Local Government Act, 2019 had abolished district councils and union councils and instead introduced tehsil, neighbourhood and village councils. The number of metropolitan corporations had also been changed. The local governments had remained scrapped for 21 months.

The Rawalpindi mayor said that as many as 56,000 local government members could not be kept deprived of their functions any more in defiance of the apex court directive. He lamented that Punjab was the only province where local councils were dissolved while they had completed their tenures in Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

Another pretext given by the government, he said, was that the detailed judgment of the apex court was being awaited. However, he said, the short order was clear and leaves no doubt about the issue. Local governments as existing in Punjab prior to their disbandment have been revived to complete their term in accordance with the law. They are to remain in place for only nine months, till December this year.

After the dissolution of the local governments, divisional commissioners had been appointed administrators of the metropolitan corporations while deputy commissioners were made administrators of the district councils.

The restored local councillors are mostly controlled by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which was the primary reason behind their termination by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government. The restoration of the local councils is a major blow to the PTI’s plans to purge these organisations of PML-N card-holders. The PTI government had framed a new law in 2019, which was mired in controversy because its ally, the PML-Q, had always been opposed to it and wanted massive amendments to the law. This has long been one of the reasons for the differences between the two coalition partners.

Local governments were elected for a five-year tenure. The first year was consumed by judicial litigation. The mayors, chairmen and councillors could not take oath in time due to this litigation, otherwise their term would have expired on December 31, 2020.