LAHORE: The Pakistan Peoples` Party has decided to challenge the Election Commission`s `illegal step` in the court to start delimitation in Islamabad without getting the Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government Bill, 2015, passed by the Senate.

`The interior ministry and the ECP, despite being conscious that so far Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government Bill, 2015, has not yet been passed by the Senate, have commenced the process oflocal body election by demarcating and declaring the local governments of Islamabad (vide notification dated 26-3-2015) as well as by notifying delimitation of the same, PPP Senator Saeed Ghani said. The PPP is also moving a motion in the Senate to raise the issue.

The bill in question was passed by the National Assembly and referred to the Senate in terms of Article 70 of the Constitution. Under Rule 98 of the Rule of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Senate 2012, the bill was referred to the standing committee concerned and is still pending there.

The senator said under the powers proposed to be given under the ICT LG Bill 2015, it undermined the authority of the senate as the bill had yet to be deliberated upon to inter-alia consider its validity quaexistence of duly promulgated laws: CapitalTerritoryLocalGovernment Ordinance, 1979, the Islamabad CapitalTerritoryLocalGovernment Ordinance, 2002 and the Islamabad CapitalTerritoryLocalGovernment Election Ordinance, 2002, mentioned in section 129 (Repeal Saving) of the ICTLG Bill, 2015.

He said in the `Statement of Objects and Reasons` of the said bill, the federal government had tried to mislead the senate by stating that `there is a lack of any local government system in ICT since 1996` whereas section 129 of the billprovidesforrepealofthe three existing laws on the subject.

`The Article 70 of the Constitution, 1973, provides for a matter in the federal legislative list a bill may originate in either house if it is passed by the house in whichit originates, it shall be transmitted to the other house,` Mr Ghani said, adding no steps could be taken or orders passed on the basis because `it was only a proposal for legislation`.

`The clause (3) of Article 75 provides that a bill will become law and be called an act of parliament only when the President has given assent. The reliance on various sections of the legislative proposal which is still pending before the senate amounts to a breach of privilege of the house,` the PPP senator said.

Advocate and Punjab PPP VicePresident Haider Zaman Qureshi told Dawn that the ECP had committed this illegality. `We are goining to file a petition in the Islamabad High Court against this grave violation.