ISLAMABAD: The Sindh government informed the Election Commission (ECP) during a meeting on Friday that it was not prepared to hold local government elections this year and proposed holding them in March 2016.

A participant of the meeting told Dawn that Punjab had said it would be ready for the elections in November, but that was also conditional and the exercise could also go beyond this year.

Chief Election Commissioner retired Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza Khan said the polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would take place in May. He said it was the commission`s constitutional responsibility to hold local government elections.

He mentioned the completion of the process in Balochistan.

The CEC said the polls were also important because of the Supreme Court`s Jan 8 judgement. The court had sought schedules of the elections during the next hearing.

Representatives of Sindh and Punjab were asked to send written requests for holding the elections and they promised to do so after consultations in four days.

The requests will be submitted to the court when it resumes hearing of a case pertaining to local government elections on Feb 12.

The Sindh chief secretary cited difficulties in delimitation of constituencies as the main reason for delay, saying a census block comprised 200 to 250 families but in his province there were a large number of apartment buildings housing 500 families each. He said there was a need to make two or more blocks for a building and the nature of the problem was such that it was not possible to solve it before March next year.

Punjab provincial election commissioner informed the ECP that maps and data of 29 of the 36 districts there had been received. He said partial data of six districts had been handed over by the Punjab government.

The last district where problems were being faced was Lahore.

The provincial election commissioner said he would be in a position to give a date for initiation of delimitation in 12 days.

An official of the commission said that under the law census blocks were made on the basis of notified data.

Since the last census was conducted in 1998, the participants of the meeting discussed the options of using electoral rolls or projected data as the base for the purpose, but no decision was taken.

The Punjab local government secretary said the province could be ready for the polls in November, subject to fulfilment of some prerequisites.