No more delays, LG polls in 60 days

SHC asks Election Commission to issue schedule for Karachi, Hyderabad in 15 days

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has asked the Election Commission to complete the process of the second phase of LG polls in Karachi and Hyderabad within 60 days after fixing the polling schedule within 15 days of the passing of its order.

The elections in seven districts of Karachi were postponed for the third time in a row, drawing criticism from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) who had been campaigning heavily in the city. Even the last-minute effort by the Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) to get the local governments’ elections postponed failed to yield desired results.

The MQM-P had become an intervener in the petitions of PTI and JI – the parties that had challenged the third postponement of elections by the ECP at the request of the Sindh government.

The senior leader of MQM-P, Waseem Akhtar on November 12 moved the court to join the hearing of the petitions filed by PTI and JI as an intervener stating that some lawmakers of the party had initiated litigations, related to the LG polls in the province, particularly in Karachi, without passing orders on those litigations.

The intervener stated that a petition filed by the MQM-P parliamentary party leader in the Sindh Assembly Kanwar Naveed Jameel and other provincial lawmakers of the party had challenged the composition of the ECP which at the time of announcing the schedule of LG polls in the province was not complete and thus all the subsequent acts, orders, notifications of the ECP were sought to be declared illegal.

The intervener also mentioned that various petitions of the MQM-P lawmakers; questioning the delimitation of various constituencies of Town and Union Committees are pending before the SHC. During the November 14, hearing of the application, Advocate Tariq Mansoor, Counsel for the intervener, contended that the apex court earlier this year had announced its judgment on the petition filed by the MQM-P and issued very important directions to the provincial government as well as the ECP for transferring various administrative and financial powers to the local government institutions besides making the election process fare and transparent as per the Article 140-A of the Constitution. He stated that the provincial assembly, after realizing that the existing provincial local government laws are not compatible with the dictates of the judgment of the apex court, has formed a Special Committee of the assembly having lawmakers from all the parties of the House to either amend the Sindh Local Government Act (SLGA) 2013, to bring it in conformity with the Supreme Court’s judgment, or to legislate a new Act.

He pleaded that unless such amendments are brought in line with the law, the holding of local bodies’ polls would be a futile exercise.

The Counsel for JI, Advocate Usman Farooq, however, opposed the application stating that similar points were raised by the MQM-P in the civil appeal filed before the Supreme Court against the June 24 judgment of the SHC whereby it had dismissed the petitions seeking to postpone the elections. The Supreme Court, while declining the ‘leave to appeal’, had ordered the ECP to hold the elections as per schedule. The bench headed by Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M Shaikh and Justice Yousuf Ali Sayeed after hearing the counsel had reserved its judgment.

In the judgment, authored by Justice Sayeed, the court concurred with an earlier judgment of June 24 that had rejected the contention of MQM-P to halt the elections till the SLGA, 2013 is made compatible with the February 2022 judgment of the apex court by suitably amending it. Justice Sayeed agreed with the earlier judgment that since the apex court had struck down sections 74 and 75 of the SLGA 2013 and declared that the Sindh government cannot assume powers of the local governments, the provincial government is left with no option but to devolve powers.

While talking to the media, after the hearing of November 14, the MQM-P leaders Waseem Akhtar and Khawja Izaharul Hassan claimed that the party was not running away from the elections, instead wanted to ensure that the next local governments in Karachi and Hyderabad enjoy the powers to solve the problems of the people at the local level.

They blamed the parties which wanted the LG elections at any cost and had supported the most controversial SLGA, 2013 which had rendered the LG institutions powerless by withdrawing all their authority by transferring all their functions to the provincial government departments. They said that the February 28, 2022 judgment of the Supreme Court had spelt out that all those functions be restored to the LG institutions like the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, and Karachi Development Authority.

They admitted that their party had been working closely with the provincial government’s ruling Pakistan Peoples Party to introduce effective amendments in the local government law to empower the local government institutions as envisaged in the apex court’s judgment. However, the MQM-P leaders denied endorsing the Sindh cabinet’s decision, of postponing the LG polls for three months, incoherently and clarified that their stance was to ensure that proper legislation is done to empower the local governments in the province.