RAWALPINDI: The passage of the local government bill in the Punjab Assembly caused unrest among elected PML-N members of the present setup, who have decided to take their objections to court.

The Punjab Assembly has passed the Punjab Local Government Bill 2019 and the Punjab Village Panchayats and Neighbourhood Councils Bill 2019 to replace the local government system the PML-N introduced in 2016. The bills have been sent to Governor Chaudhry Sarwar for final approval.Under the local government system detailed in the bill, elections will be held on a non-party basis, every local government will have a directly-elected head, financial matters will be dealt with local governments directly, waste management companies will be abolished and the sanitation department will come under civic bodies.

In response, elected union councilchairmen from Rawalpindi have devised a plan to challenge the bills in court along with elected members from other parts of the provinces. At a meeting, they decided that Mayor Sardar Naseem would file a petition in the Lahore High Court (LHC).

Opposition members have also supported the mayor in this regard.

After the meeting, Mayor Naseem told Dawn that the PTI government in Punjab wants to replace the system to run local government af fairs through the bureaucracy.

`The government will appoint administrators in civic bodies and it sets its eyes on development funds available with civic bodies. Soon after coming to power, the PTI-led Punjab government stopped utilising devel-opment funds in the civic bodies through elected union council chairmen and is now planning to replace the union council chairmen,` he said.

He added that the mayors of Rawalpindi, Lahore, Attock and other cities have decided to file a petition in the L HC together in a day or two, asking for elected bodies to be allowed to complete their term.

He said the PTI had introduced the same system in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but it will be implemented after the local bodies complete their tenure in August.

`The local governments in Balochistan completed their term and it is the right of Punjab`s elected members to complete their term as per their constitutional right,` he said.

He added that cantonment boards` local government members would complete their term in July, but municipal corporations were not being given the right to finish theirs.

`We are going to challenge this on the basis of discrimination against Punjab`s local government members for not beingallowed to complete their term,` he said.

He added that the local government elections on Dec 5, 2015, were held on Supreme Court directives on the party basis, but the PTI wants to bring a non-party system.

`The PTI is afraid that if the elections were held on a party basis, the PML-N would come to power again as the people are fed up with the wrong policies of the present ruling elite,` he said.

Punjab Minister for Informal Education Raja Rashid Hafeez said the government would introduce a local government system on a non-party basis to fulfil Prime Minister Imran Khan`s promise to devolve power at the grassroots level.

He said the opposition would go to court and it would not matter, as the provincial assembly has passed the bill and it will be implemented.

He said PML-N elected members were worried about their commissions in development projects and the PTI is committed toendingcorrupdon.

`The new local government system is the real change in the system,` he said.