KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has issued contempt notices to the Sindh government and the Election Commission over their failure to hold local government elections in the province.

The ECP has been instructed to write another letter to the provincial government over the local body polls.

Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar asked when the elections will be held. The elections were postponed because of the census. The petitioner said that the Sindh government is not able to account for the Rs78 billion it spends every year. The results of the census haven’t been made public till now.

The Sindh Bureau of Statistics Planning and Development Department told the court that the results will be available soon. The case has been adjourned till December 15. According to Section 20 of the Sindh Local Government Act, 2013, the four-year term of Sindh’s local councils expired in August 2020.

The ECP is supposed to conduct the elections within 120 months of the expiry of the term. But the area was delimited on the basis of the 1998 census, which has now become obsolete after a fresh census was conducted in 2017.

Therefore, under Section 221 of the Elections Act, 2017 and Section 10 of the Sindh Local Government Act, 2013, local councils must be delimited once again. Wasim Akhtar was sworn in on August 30, 2016 after the MQM won the local body elections in December 2015. He stepped down from the post in August.

Four years ago, the polls were held on the directives of the Supreme Court. The administrator was running the city’s affairs as no elections were held after 2009. NNI