Committee deliberating to ensure changes in LG law in line with constitution, SHC told

The select committee constituted by the Sindh government is deliberating in order to ensure changes in the Sindh Local Government Act 2013 are in line with Article 140-A of the constitution, the local government secretary told the Sindh High Court on Wednesday.

Filing a statement on identical petitions against certain amendments to the local government laws, the secretary said that subsequent to the Supreme Court judgment to make the local government laws in line with the constitutional mandate, the government had constituted a select committee comprising members of the provincial assembly to ensure participation of every political party.

He said the committee held meetings and was deliberating on the matter so as to esnure the Sindh Local Government Act 2013 was in line with Article 140-A of the constitution and to consider amendment bills in this regard.

A division bench, headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha, after taking the report on record, directed the relevant parties to supply the copies of replies to the other side and told the office to fix the matter after six weeks.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami and others had filed the petitions against certain amendments to the local government laws. The petitioners said the government had introduced those amendments in contravention of Article 140-A of the constitution.

They said the provincial government had usurped several departments of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, including health, hospitals and education, in the garb of the new amendments in sheer violation of the constitution, which emphasised the devolution of powers to local governments.

They said numerous vital functions relating to health and education had been withdrawn wholesale from the ambit of local governments without any rational or justification. They said the withdrawal of medical colleges and teaching hospitals from the KMC’s management was a key example of the patently arbitrary and mala fide nature of the changes made in the law.

The petitioners further argued that the impugned amendments had unlawfully curtailed the election commission’s delimitation powers, saying that such restrictions were arbitrary and in violation of Article 140-A of the constitution.

They submitted that the amendments had inexplicably bound the elections commission to conform to a delimitation exercise carried out more than six years ago, which preceded even the latest census conducted in 2017. They said the only conceivable motive for such a restriction appeared to be in pursuance of gerrymandering or some other scheme designed to distort the process of the fair local bodies elections.

They submitted that Karachi has a population of more than 30 million and needs a proper and empowered metropolitan corporation instead of a powerless city district government. The court was requested to declare amendments to sections 14 (I)(a) 14 (3)(b) and (c), 14(III)(d)(I) to (III) and 17 (a) (b) of the Sindh Local Government Amendments Act as unconstitutional.