Islamabad, October 8, 2025: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Wednesday announced that local government elections in Punjab will be held in the last week of December 2025, ending years of delay in the country’s most populous province.
The verdict was issued by a bench headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja, which also directed that the delimitation process begin on Thursday and be completed within two months. Other members of the bench included Nisar Durrani, Shah Muhammad Jatoi, and Babar Hassan Bharwana.
“The ECP will hold local body elections in Punjab under the 2022 law,” the bench ruled in its written order.
During Wednesday’s hearing, the chief election commissioner expressed strong displeasure over the repeated postponements of local body polls, calling the situation an “embarrassment” for both the ECP and successive provincial governments.
“The local government elections have not been held in the country’s biggest province. It is not only an embarrassment for the Election Commission but also for the various governments that ruled during this delay,”
CEC Raja remarked.
He added that successive governments in Punjab had deliberately avoided holding the polls.
“All the governments that came into power did not want these elections to be held,” he said.
The CEC emphasized that the time had come for the ECP to exercise its constitutional authority and take a decisive step to restore local governance in Punjab.
Referring to recent statements from provincial officials, Raja noted, “A minister said yesterday that Punjab and Islamabad are ready, but the ECP is delaying the process. They themselves are responsible for the delay while blaming the ECP.”
In its detailed judgment, the ECP noted that the term of Punjab’s local governments expired in December 2021, yet elections have not been conducted since.
The order highlighted that the Punjab government amended local government laws five times over recent years, repeatedly changing the legal framework and stalling the electoral process.
Two separate local government laws were passed in May 2019, followed by an ordinance in December 2021. Another law was enacted on June 24, 2022, and yet another on November 16, 2022, the judgment stated.
The ECP recalled that it had initially begun delimitation in June 2020, but the process was suspended at the Punjab government’s request. Subsequent delimitation exercises were carried out between December 2021 and March 2022, and again from mid-2022 to February 2023.
In June 2024, the ECP had once again issued a delimitation schedule — which was withdrawn after another request from the provincial government.
With the latest ECP directive, the fresh delimitation process is set to start immediately and conclude within two months, paving the way for local body elections in Punjab in December — the first since the expiry of previous local governments nearly four years ago.
