ISLAMABAD: A day after appointing the Peshawar election commissioner, as the district returning officer for the forthcoming LG elections in Islamabad, the ECP decided to review the decision.

Dawn has learnt that a Grade 19 officer of the ECP head office in Islamabad will be notified Thursday afternoon as the new DRO for the federal capital.

ECP spokesman Khursheed Alam would only say that “if the decision is changed, it would be only to facilitate the election process. It could be cumbersome for an officer to come from Peshawar to conduct elections in Islamabad.”

About the initial appointment, he said: “It was solely based on the experience the officers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa gained recently in conducting local government polls.”

Local government elections in Islamabad are to be held on July 25 on the directives of the Supreme Court.

Although delimitation of the constituencies in the federal capital territory is expected to be finalised by June 15, the ECP in its rush to clear grounds for the election has already notified the names of the ROs.

Even the task of passing a relevant law for holding the first-ever local government election in Islamabad is pending. The Senate has passed the bill but the National Assembly’s and the Presidential assent for the same are awaited. “If the relevant law is not passed and assented by June 20, it would be difficult to hold the elections on July 25 as stipulated,” said an official of the election commission.—Kalbe Ali