President Dr. Arif Alvi on Sunday refused to sign the Islamabad City Territory Local Government (Amendment) Bill, 2022, which called for an increase in the number of union councils in the capital and referred to it as “anathema to democracy.”
The measure was returned by clause (1) (b) of Article 75 of the Constitution, according to a series of tweets from the official Twitter account of Pakistan’s president, who noted that signing it would cause the local government elections to be further delayed.
According to him, the federal government’s hasty actions caused the election process to be delayed twice, which is antithetical to democracy.
The president added that the inability to hold LB elections in the nation’s capital was due to malafide measures by the federal government.
He said that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced elections for Local Government in ICT on July 31, 2022, after the completion of the delimitation of 50 Union Councils.
He claimed that the federal government increased the number of union councils from 50 to 101, postponing elections despite the announcement of the voting date.
In the most recent development, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was unable to carry out the Islamabad High Court’s (IHC) directive to hold local government elections in Islamabad on December 31.
