By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Islamabad’s long-awaited local government elections, due on 20 December, have been suspended by the High Court after a petitioner argued that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was preparing to hold them on constituency boundaries that no longer matched the law in force.
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday suspended the commission’s order and election schedule, both dated 21 October, until the next hearing on 26 November. Later in the day, the ECP complied. A notification from its secretariat put the local election programme for the federal capital on hold until that date.
Justice Umair Majeed Malik, sitting as a single-member bench, granted the interim relief on a writ petition filed last week by Chaudhry Amjad Ali. The order said the impugned order and the schedule, as revised by the commission, “shall remain suspended until the next date of hearing”. The court issued notices to the respondents and told them to file reports and para-wise comments before the next hearing.
Ali’s case is that the polls cannot be held until the legal status of the existing delimitation of constituencies has been conclusively settled. Barrister Qazi Adil Aziz appeared for him, along with Malik Talha and Muhammad Yaseen Iqbal. They cited Articles 140-A(2), 218(3) and 219(d) of the Constitution, which they said required the ECP to hold local elections “honestly, justly, fairly and in accordance with the law”.
The dispute turns on two pieces of legislation. The Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government Act, 2015 provided for one Metropolitan Corporation and 125 Union Councils, each divided into nine wards. Delimitation under that structure began in December 2024, and an election programme was issued on 26 December 2025, but it was later withdrawn.
The Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government Ordinance, 2026 changed the structure. It introduced three Town Corporations, altered how Union Councils are constituted and delimited, scrapped the nine-ward system and moved delimitation to census blocks. The number of Union Councils rose from 125 to 130. The petition says the ECP issued revised delimitation timelines on 25 August and completed the exercise on 14 October with a final list of 130 Union Councils.
The ordinance then ran into the constitutional limit on such measures. After a single 120-day extension it ceased to have effect under Article 89, and the 2015 Act was revived. The petitioner’s lawyers said the ECP then issued its order and schedule to hold polls under the old Act. In their account, that order did not deal with delimitation of the 125 Union Councils, their nine wards or the Metropolitan Corporation. They argued that boundaries drawn under the amended law could not be carried over, and that fresh delimitation and new electoral rolls under the 2015 Act and the Elections Act, 2017 were needed first. Going ahead without them, they said, would breach Article 218(3) and waste public money.
The commission has taken the opposite view. It held that because the 2015 Act was still in force, the elections should be held under it, with the mayor and deputy mayors to be chosen once the polls were completed. It had fixed 20 December for voting and set aside 21 to 24 December for consolidating results.
After hearing initial arguments, the court said the points raised needed consideration. The next hearing falls 24 days before the date the commission had set for voting.
The ruling came a day after Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja accused the federal government of trying to sabotage the polls and said they would go ahead as scheduled. He was reacting to a government directive that teachers should not be given election duties in Islamabad. “The federal government wants to sabotage the Islamabad local government elections,” he said, asking where the commission would find staff instead. He spoke during a hearing on alleged code-of-conduct violations in the recent NA-77 by-election in Gujranwala.
Islamabad’s last local government completed its term on 14 February 2021, and no elections have been held since. The previous polls, in 2015, were won by the PML-N, and Sheikh Ansar Aziz became the capital’s first mayor. The ECP is required to hold local elections within 120 days of a term’s expiry, a deadline that passed years ago.
Since then the ECP has issued several schedules and cancelled them, citing legislative changes and court orders. Delimitation of constituencies and Union Councils has been carried out six times and an election schedule issued four times. Polls announced for 15 February were postponed after the federal government decided to bring in a new law. The ordinance behind the 130-council structure was promulgated on 10 January 2026. This month more than 3,500 candidates were reported to have filed nomination papers, and their candidacies now depend on the court.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
