LG in capital: Reply sought from ministries

ISLAMABAD, April 14: The Islamabad High Court on Thursday directed the ministries of law, local government and rural development to submit their response within two weeks in a petition seeking local government elections in the federal capital. Justice Riaz Ahmed Khan issued the directive to the secretaries concerned while taking up the petition of former chairman National Reconstruction Bureau Danial Aziz. "Political devolution was initiated in 2000 aiming at transferring the administrative and financial powers to the elected representatives at local government level to empower the impoverished," the petitioner maintained. He said almost all capital cities in the world were governed by elected mayors but the residents of Islamabad were being denied the opportunity. In 2001, legislation was made and in 2002 an ordinance was issued for local government in Islamabad and the laws were given constitutional protection under the 17th amendment in 2003, said Mr Aziz. "All these laws have empowered the chief election commissioner to hold local government elections and the higher judiciary on different occasions has ruled that the election commission is responsible to hold timely election but the same is not being done," the petitioner stated. He said the local government system should replace the old bureaucratic control over grass-roots level administration. The authorities concerned have been saying that security of important offices such as President House, PM House, parliament and foreign missions cannot be handed over to the local government representatives. Mr Aziz prayed the court to direct the chief election commissioner to arrange the local bodies` elections in Islamabad without any delay.