It is believed that Alvi is delaying Islamabad by blocking a bill that is a ruse. LG polls
President returns ICT The LG (Amendment) Bill has not been signed, and it accuses the federal government of engaging in “mala fide” activities.
ISLAMABAD: President Dr. Arif Alvi returned the Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2022, which would have increased the number of union councils in the territory, unsigned on Sunday in accordance with clause (1) (b) of Article 75 of the Constitution, accusing the federal government of “mala fide actions” and pointing out that it would further delay the LG elections.
After the Senate’s chairman, Sadiq Sanjrani, hastily called a session of the upper house of parliament on the government’s demand on December 23 since Alvi had refused to give his approval to it, the president returned the measure days after the Senate had passed it.
President Alvi tweeted upon returning the bill, “[the] actions of the federal government taken in haste resulted in delaying [the] election process twice, which was anathema to democracy.”
He continued by saying that a number of “malafide measures of [the] federal government” prevented the LG elections from taking place in ICT.
Alvi added that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced elections for the LG polls in Islamabad on July 31, 2022, following the completion of the delimitation of 50 union councils.
He said, “The administration expanded the number of union councils from 50 to 101, resulting in [the] postponement of [the LG] elections, despite [the] declaration of [the] polling date.
Alvi noted that the ECP has agreed to hold the LG elections in ICT on December 31, 2022 following the demarcation of 101 union councils.
The present bill’s Section 2 did, he claimed, allow for 125 union councils in the nation’s capital.
Therefore, he said that the elections that were supposed to take place on December 31, 2022, had once more been delayed.
Alvi said that the manner in which the mayor and their deputy were elected had been modified in accordance with Section 3 of the current bill following the publication of the election timetable.
The government purportedly enacted the bill to postpone LG elections in the nation’s capital and avoid the president’s refusal to call the Senate into session.
The primary goal of the December 23 Senate session, which was called with less than an hour’s notice, was to adopt the legislation that would have allowed the LG elections to be postponed “indefinitely,” a senator had previously told The Express Tribune.
The opposition, on the other hand, protested the decision and used sloganeering to call out the government for avoiding the polls.
The House was only able to pass the bill before the session was abruptly adjourned. The agenda had called for discussion of the situation resulting from the recent wave of terrorism in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa as well as the overall law and order situation in the nation.
It is amusing that the bill enacted had to be validated by Alvi, who is a member of the PTI, whose senators surrounded the chairman’s desk and protested against the bill during the session, even though the government found another method to call the session after the president refused.
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A senator from the ruling alliance responded in the affirmative and confirmed that it required Alvi’s ratification in order to become law in response to the question of how the bill would assist the government in delaying the Islamabad LG elections given that the president was the sole authority to make it a law.
The federal cabinet had stated just days before the LG elections that the number of union councils will increase from the current 101 to 125.
It was noted that the ECP subsequently declared that the federal capital’s LG elections would take place on December 31 as scheduled.
The federal government’s announcement to raise the number of union councils in ICT was deemed “illegal” by the electoral watchdog, which was seen as a huge setback to the Centre because it had purportedly thought the action was sufficient to postpone the elections.
