LHC asked to order early local government polls in Punjab

An application filed in the Lahore High Court asks the court to order local government elections across Punjab without delay, arguing that holding the polls is a constitutional requirement rather than a matter left to the provincial government's discretion.

The Judicial Activism Panel filed the application through Advocate Azhar Siddique, Dawn reported. It was lodged as a miscellaneous application inside a writ petition already pending before the court, not as a fresh case.

The application asks the court to restrain the transfer of local government powers and assets to unelected bodies and to private companies. It argues that residents of Punjab have been left without elected local representatives and that this amounts to a violation of their rights.

No hearing date in the matter was reported. The reports did not name the respondents in the application and did not say whether the provincial government had been asked for a reply.

In a separate filing, 24 News HD reported that a petition was moved in the Islamabad High Court against the local bodies elections schedule in the federal capital. The outlet's report carried no further detail: it named no petitioner, no grounds and no date, and no other report in this file carried the Islamabad filing.

The two filings sit in different courts and cover different territory. The Lahore High Court application concerns local government elections across Punjab. The Islamabad High Court petition concerns the schedule for the capital's local bodies polls.

Dawn also reported a separate application filed in the Lahore High Court by Advocate Azhar Siddique on Punjab's e-challan system, alleging that fines are imposed without proper identification of vehicles or human verification. That report cited a Gujrat resident whose 2018 model car received five e-challans for violations in Lahore.