Punjab declares 6,600 union councils ahead of LG elections

LAHORE: The Punjab government has centralised data on union councils across the province ahead of long-delayed local government elections, declaring 6,600 union councils in 41 districts under the Punjab Local Government Act 2025.

According to Local Government Minister Zeeshan Rafique, the province has been divided into 2,496 urban and 4,104 rural union councils, with the data on the new divisions uploaded to a centralised system.

The province’s population for the purpose of the local government exercise has been declared at 123,320,314. Lahore has 433 urban union councils with a population of 11,750,082, while Faisalabad has 443 union councils and a population of 9,075,819.

Multan has 266 union councils with a population of 5,316,839, followed by Rahim Yar Khan with 295 and 5,564,703 people, Gujranwala with 226 and 4,809,409, Sialkot with 240 and 4,422,913, and Rawalpindi with 220 and 4,214,619.

Rafique said preparations were under way to hold the local government elections in December or January.

The development is part of a process that has been delayed for several years because of repeated changes to Punjab’s local government laws and administrative arrangements.

Punjab’s previous elected local governments were formed under the Punjab Local Government Act 2013 after elections held in phases in 2015 and 2016.

Their first meetings were held in January 2017 and their five-year term ended on December 31, 2021.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has previously noted that the local governments completed their tenure on that date.

The elected local governments had, however, been dissolved prematurely in May 2019 after the then Punjab government enacted the Punjab Local Government Act 2019 and replaced the 2013 law.

The Supreme Court declared the premature dissolution unlawful in March 2021 and ordered restoration of the previous local governments for the remainder of their legal term. Punjab subsequently restored them in October 2021.

After their term expired, the province moved through a series of legislative changes without holding fresh elections.

The Punjab government promulgated the Punjab Local Government Ordinance 2021 in December 2021, which expired in June 2022. The government subsequently enacted the Punjab Local Government Act 2022 in June and enacted another version of the law in November that year.

The ECP had already taken steps towards holding elections under the 2022 law.

It issued a delimitation schedule in December 2021 and completed the first delimitation exercise in March 2022.

The commission announced the first phase of elections for June 9, 2022, but the Lahore High Court’s Multan bench suspended the election programme. Further changes to the law and delays in providing the required data subsequently stalled the process.

The ECP again pushed the Punjab government to complete the legislative process in 2024 and early 2025.

In its 2025 quarterly newsletter, the commission said frequent changes in electoral laws had repeatedly forced it to restart preparations.

It said the Punjab government had assured the ECP that it was working on a new local government law and had expressed its commitment to support the commission in holding elections without further delay.

The breakthrough came in October 2025 when the ECP announced that local government elections would be held in Punjab in the last week of December under the 2022 law and ordered the delimitation process to begin.

The Punjab Assembly, however, passed the Punjab Local Government Act 2025 shortly afterwards. The new law repealed the 2022 Act, forcing the ECP to withdraw its delimitation schedule and restart the process under the new legal framework.

The ECP said at the time that it was legally bound to conduct elections under the local government law and rules enacted by the province.

Under the Punjab Local Government Act 2025, the ECP is responsible for conducting local government elections, while the Elections Act 2017 applies to the process as far as possible.

The law provides for elections to union councils and other tiers of local government.

The ECP subsequently issued a fresh delimitation schedule under the 2025 Act and the Punjab Local Government (Delimitation of Union Councils) Rules 2026. The commission said delimitation was a legal prerequisite for holding the elections.

ECP, Punjab agree to hold LG polls

In August 2026, the ECP and Punjab government agreed that the local government elections would be held between December 15, 2026 and January 15, 2027.

The provincial government proposed the window while citing examinations and foggy weather, while the ECP said holding local government elections was a constitutional requirement under Article 140-A.

The Punjab government also expressed a desire to hold the elections in phases, with the ECP seeking a plan for phased polling.

The latest centralisation of union council data is therefore another step towards finalising the electoral map before the ECP conducts the polls.

The 2025 law provides for nine general members of each union council to be elected through secret ballot.

Reserved-seat members are elected indirectly by the general members, while the chairperson and vice-chairperson are elected by the union council members from among themselves.

The present framework is significantly different from the earlier system and has been challenged in court. Petitions against the 2025 law have, among other issues, questioned the role of bureaucracy in local government structures and the indirect election of union council chairpersons.