This document provides an overview of the history of local government systems in Pakistan since independence. It discusses the village panchayat system that existed pre-British rule, the introduction of local governments by the British as a top-down system to co-opt elites, and various local government systems post-independence including Basic Democracies under Ayub Khan and the People's Local Government System under Bhutto. It notes that local governments generally lacked autonomy and were controlled by the central bureaucracy, and were used by rulers like Ayub and Zia to legitimize their regimes through decentralization while centralizing power.

1. Local Government Systems
Since Independence

2. LG in pre-independence period
• Before the advent of the British rule in India, there was no advanced
tradition of local self-government in the modern sense. However, a
rudimentary local government system did exist in the rural areas.
• This was the system of village panchayats (literally council of five)
which performed administrative, judicial and sometimes
developmental functions.
• However, in terms of geographical coverage and history, Panchayats
never existed over the whole of the sub-continent and not in all
periods in history.
• Although some system of village self-government more or less existed
in the various ages of Indian history

3. • In terms of representation, the Panchayat was only rarely
representative of the village as a whole, often representing the
founding-families, upper castes and large farmers.
• It is also worth emphasizing that Panchayats were not the only form
of village government in pre-British India.
• The system of village headmen is one example of other forms of rural
government although “under the reign of the Moguls
• In the time of the British government the headman was more a
representative of the central government rather than of village self-
government.”

4. LG during British rule
• In the areas that presently comprise Pakistan, local governments were
introduced by the British not by building on the village panchayats,
but instead from scratch.
• Following the annexation of Sindh in 1843 and of Punjab in 1849.
• After the War of Independence (or Indian Mutiny) of 1857, with the
governance of India transferred from the hands of the East India
Company to the Crown, attempts were made to co-opt the native
elite by establishing representative local governments.
• These local governments were formed in a “top-down” manner in
urban and rural areas, with extremely circumscribed functions and
members who were not locally elected but nominated by the British
bureaucracy.

5. • However, despite legislation for setting up district committees in
almost every province, “The Committees were nothing more than a
convenience to the District Magistrate to supply him with information
or to carry out miscellaneous duties ...
• Village life was hardly touched by the new District Committees. They
were formed by the District Magistrate from among his ‘mulaqatis’
and other respectable citizens.
• The official influence was almost over-powering”.

6. Patronage and Rural Biases under the British
• An interesting aspect of the local structures created by the British was
its reliance on co-opting and entrenching local elite through a
selective but extensive system of patronage.
• This was particularly true of the Punjab where the colonial
bureaucracy had ample opportunities for providing patronage
through land settlement policy, grant of colony lands in the canal
colony districts of Punjab and the use of protective legislation like
the Punjab Land Alienation Act 1900
the Punjab Pre-Emption Act, 1913 which prohibited transfer of land
from agricultural to non-agricultural classes

7. • The Punjab tradition of establishing patron-client relationships
between the state bureaucracy and local elite resulted in a rural-
urban division, which restricted politics away from the urban middle
classes.
• Safeguarding the loyal landowning classes from economic and
political domination by the urban elites became colonial policy.
• Thus what emerges from this history of local governments as created
under the British is that the system was not introduced in response to
popular demand or local pressure, but primarily as a result of the
central government’s initiative and functioned under the imperial
bureaucracy’s control.

8. • Moreover, from the beginning, there was a contradiction between the
development of autonomous local self-governing institutions and the
imperial interests of creating a loyal native class, and it is the latter
that dominated.
• The rise of organized political strength and political parties, during the
early twentieth century, was accommodated by granting more
political space at the provincial level as a result the provincial and
central tiers emerged as the hub of political activity.
• It not only shifted political focus away from local governments, but
also resulted in a lack of ownership to build local governments by
political elites that were active in the Pakistan movement.

9. LG in the initial phase after independence
• The independence movement was driven by political party
mobilizations at the provincial and higher levels, post independence,
there was understandably little emphasis on local governments which
had played little role in the independence movement given their
stronger ties to the British.
• Thus by 1947 functional local governments existed only in Punjab in
the form of village panchayats and municipal councils, although with
mostly non-elected members.
• Following independence, despite official pronouncements, there
emerged no real commitment to the process of decentralization.

10. • Even approved decisions, such as democratizing local governments by
adopting universal adult franchise and making district local bodies entirely
elected, were not implemented.
• As before, the bureaucracy completely controlled local bodies. The local
bodies were denied legitimacy by not holding elections and where
elections were held, by limited ‘franchise’ and massive malpractices.
• The decade of the 1950s was in general marked by political instability with
increasing centralization and a center increasingly dominated by the civil
and armed bureaucracy.
• Unlike the Congress Party in India, the Muslim League in Pakistan failed to
organize as a political party and to utilize local bodies for developing its
political base, thus failing ‘to replace the district administration as a rival
source of patronage’

11. Basic Democracies 1958-71
Salient features
• Total duration of this system was 5 years
• There are two types of local councils- urban council and rural council
• At the primary level three different councils were formed (union
councils, union committee and tehsil and thana council)
• Special representation was given to women, peasants and workers
• Direct elections were proposed at lower level
• All heads were elected indirectly

12. Structure
Rural level (district level)
• District council consist of all departments of government few elected
chairmen of UCs and TCs.
• Tehsil/Thana councils- all chairmen of UCs and TCs were member of
Tehsil councils.
Urban level (Divisions)
• Division council
• Union committees function at urban level
• Chairmen at UCs participate at municipal committees and
cantonment boards.

13. the Basic Democracies system had a pronounced and deliberate rural
bias both in terms of representation and flow of resources.
Rural areas were given access to development resources through being
associated with the Rural Works Programme. This bias was not
surprising given that the main source of Ayub’s support lay in the rural
areas.
Union Councils were given some developmental functions and were
empowered to impose local taxes for local projects.
They were also conferred with certain judicial functions under the
Conciliation Courts Ordinance 1961 and with arbitration powers in
divorce proceedings under the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961.

14. • However, the “constituencies from which local councilors were
elected were small enough to be kept under the coercive control of
the civil servants.
• the Union Councils could again be managed and manipulated through
the patronage and coercive powers that the central government
could exercise through the deputy commissioners and their lower
echelons.
• In this way the urban areas were out-flanked and the president’s
power came directly from the quiescent rural areas”
• This rural inclination in politics changed when Z.A. Bhutto mobilized
urban middle class.

15. People’s Local Government System 1975
• ZAB abolished Basic democracies and replaced it by a temporary
ordinance called Punjab People’s Local Government Ordinance
(1972).
• A specially would be committee tasked with creating people’s friendly
local government system.
• Practically nothing new was given in the ordinance.
• Later ZAB created a committee to develop LG system. New system
was introduced in 1975.

16. Structure
• Rural council consisting of dehi council for each village, halqa council
for a group of villages and zila council for each district.
• Urban council consisted of mohallah council for each mohallah,
municipal committee for each city exceeding population 20,000-
800,000 and municipal corporation for population exceeding 800,000.
• Basic framework was same as BD.
• Elections were recommended on non-party basis

17. LG by General Zia
• General Zia ul Haq. Like Ayub, Zia combined political centralization at
the federal level with decentralization from the provincial to the local
level in order to legitimize his military regime.
• Political centralization was achieved during the early years (1977-85)
of the regime through the imposition of Martial Law, which held the
1973 Constitution in abeyance.
• It was followed in 1985 by the 8th Constitutional Amendment that
established indirect military rule through a quasi Presidential form of
government

18. • Decentralization was achieved through the promulgation of Local
government ordinances (LGOs) and local bodies were elected in all
four provinces during 1979 and 1980.
• In essence, the army sought to use its old strategy of ‘divide and rule’
by creating a new and competing class of ‘collaborative’ local-level
politicians.
• Like Ayub, Zia also sought to neutralize the influence of political
parties by holding local elections on a non-party basis.
• Moreover, electoral competition was significantly weakened when the
army disqualified a large number of candidates with a PPP affiliation
in 1979.
• Historical evidence suggests that these measures resulted in the
localization and personalization of politics at the local level.

19. Structure
• Urban council-including town committee, municipal committees and
municipal corporations.
• Rural council- including zila council and union council(markaz council
which was the cluster of union councils)

20. • Zia’s LGO also created a legislative rural-urban divide by defining
autonomous local councils for urban areas.
• A consequence of this separation was, contrary to the previous
situation, a bias in favor of urban areas both in terms of local
government income generation and expenditures.
• Urban local councils were given access to more buoyant sources of
revenue such as the ‘octroi’.
• The legislative separation between rural and urban councils meant
that the latter were under no legal obligation to allocate money to
develop their rural hinterland.
• This resulted in inequality between the income of rural and urban
councils, which has persisted into the nineties

21. • The urban-rural divide in local governments was partly a response to
socio-demographic changes, in particular to the fast rate of
urbanization that had taken place in Pakistan during its first thirty
years.
• It was an indicator that state wanted to accommodate urban middle
class political mobilizations, especially in the Punjab.
• It later formed the core of the anti-PPP PNA movement.
• Rural class dominated assemblies after 1985 due to their overall
majority.
• Personal patronage and personal bargaining for political survival in
presence of weak party structures.
• Competition for patronage seeped down to local level. Provincial
leadership started perceiving local leadership as competitor.

22. • This competition had real consequences as MPAs and MNAs began to
progressively take over functions performed by locally elected
representatives, including the running of the District Development
Advisory Committees (DDACs).
• Moreover, the concentration of available revenues in the hands of the
Federal and provincial governments constrained the financial capacity
of local governments prompting the Provinces to play an increasing
role in service provision.
• These changes further centralized the provision of local services at
the provincial level.

23. • Finally, this tension between provincial and local tiers resulted in the
suspension of local bodies between 1993 and 1998 and as before, in
the period immediately following independence.
• Ironically it was democratic forces at the provincial and higher levels
that pushed for a retrenchment of local governments.
• Only Punjab introduced Local Council Act in 1996.

24. Devolution Plan 2001
• After coming into power in October 2001 Gen Musharraf introduced
6 point strategy for devolution of power.
• The strategy included the following
1. Devolution of power for genuine empowerment
2. Decentralization of administrative authority in the essence of local
government
3. The deconstruction required for the community participation
4. Diffusion of power to avoid autocracy
5. The distribution of power from center to provinces and local
governments

25. • Under the six point agenda following steps were taken:
1. Voters age was reduced from 21 to 18
2. Women and peasants representation 33%
3. Representation was given to minorities at union council and upper
council’s level.
4. District government under district nazim as head of the
government. District was made the basic governance unit. It was
made responsible for the overall development and maintenance at
district level. 13 government departments were devolved to district
level.
5. Union councils were established at both rural and urban area.
6. Jurisdiction and responsibility of Zila council was extended.

26. 7. District council previously was only formed for the rural area but
under LGO 2001 district council was empowered full-fledged tier of
government in a revenue district.
8. District Nazims replaced the role of deputy commissioner as
executive head of the district with powers of district magistrate and
district collector. The district commissioners were made subordinate to
district nazims.
9. DCO responsibility was restricted to coordination between
government departments and district government account officer.
10. Municipal services were extended to all rural areas through tehsil
municipal administration and town municipal administration in capital
and other big cities. Similar municipal facilities in all areas.

27. 11. Citizen’s community boards to enable citizen's involvement in the
developmental activities.
12. District police- provincial government was bound to provide police
force to district nazim. Nazim was authorize to select district police
officer of his choice. DPO was subordinate to nazim.

28. Greater presence and scope of elected government at local
level:
• As is clear from the figures, post-devolution, the elected government
and provincial administration have been integrated at the district and
Tehsil levels, the division abolished altogether at the local level.
• provincial administration has been made accountable to elected
officials at the local level.
• Additionally, the vast majority of public services that were previously
under the local provincial administration, have been transferred to
the local governments, substantially increasing their scope and
responsibilities.

29. Limited Financial decentralization:
• While the scope of local governments in terms of the services they
are responsible for and how they allocate district level expenditures
across services increased substantially post-devolution.
• The extent of financial decentralization is limited both because
(i) districts governments have limited revenue collection abilities and
still rely primarily on provincial and ultimately federal funds, through
the provincial finance commission awards
(ii) a significant majority of district expenditures are “establishment
charges” which, while incurred by the district, cannot be altered by the
district; these expenditures include salaries of administrative personnel
who continue to be provincial employees and as such the district
cannot fire them or adjust their wages.

30. • No decentralization of any federal powers to either the provincial or
local levels.
• For example, even the few taxation powers that were devolved to the
local governments (e.g. entertainment and property tax etc.) were
previously provincial taxes and there was no transfer of any federal
taxes to lower levels.

31. Integration of Rural and Urban areas:
• During the pre-devolution period there was a sharp and (financially)
important distinction between urban and rural local governments.
• However, post-devolution as is apparent in the figures, this distinction
is no longer there.

32. Changed local electoral processes:
• Prior to devolution, members of urban local councils and district councils
were directly elected, and then they elected the heads of their respective
councils.
• Under devolution, both the members and heads of the lowest level of
government, the union council, are elected through public vote as before.
• However, interestingly enough the new legislation has created inter-
governmental political linkages by ensuring that the majority (two thirds)
of the members of the Tehsil and district councils are these elected heads.
• The remaining one-third members and heads of the district and Tehsil
councils are elected indirectly by the directly elected union-council
members.
• Thus in particular, the head of the district government, the District Nazim,
need not command a majority of the public vote in a district but rather a
majority of the union councilors and union nazims elected in the district

33. Heterogeneity in the Extent of
Decentralization:
• What is also not apparent in these figures is that the decentralization
process was not carried out uniformly either across all administrative
departments and more importantly, across services within a given
department.
• Specifically, while most provincial service departments were devolved
there were a couple of notable exceptions like the Police and
irrigation departments.

34. Local government system in Pakistan since 2008
• Musharraf gave a short-term constitutional status to the local
government up till 2009 through a Presidential Order, up till 2009 no
government could dissolve local governments.
• After the dismissal of Musharraf’s government in 2008, the Pakistan
People’s Party under the leadership of Mr Zardari introduced the 18th
Constitutional Amendment that enhanced provincial autonomy.
• By this time, the constitutional restriction on amending local
government ordinance of 2001 had already expired in 2009.
• After that, it became possible for provinces to legislate a local
government system of their choosing.
• Consequently, different provinces opted for different structures for
their local government

35. • The provincial assembly of Baluchistan passed the Local Government Act in 2010,
whereas the provincial assemblies of Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
passed their Local Government Acts in 2013.
• The Local Government Acts for each province, in their current form, provide
limited autonomy to the local councils concerning fiscal management and control
over service delivery, revenue, and tax and police departments.
• While all the Local Government Acts devolved some service delivery functions to
local governments, provinces still retained control of large entities such as the
Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, Sindh Building Control Authority, Lahore
Development Authority (LDA), and Solid Waste Management (SWM), etc.
• They also had administrative control of education and health service delivery.
• The Local Government Acts of all four provinces subordinated the local
governments to the provincial governments in numerous ways. For example, they
allowed the provincial Chief Ministers to dismiss a local government or head of
the council and appoint officeholders after the dismissal of council leaders.

36. • Unlike Local Government Acts introduced by the military regimes, the new
local government laws introduced by civilian governments in different
provinces opted for party-based elections of local governments.
• However, the laws provided were excessively deferential to provincial
governments and were limited in their scope in providing any meaningful
‘democratic ethos which is at the very heart of the idea of Local
Government’.
• Overall, the reluctance of provincial governments during the civil rule for
establishing strong local governments was because provincial ministers and
members of provincial parliaments could keep the development funds in
their hands to build their networks of personalized patronage.
• Such a situation exists because of continuous and long periods of military
rule that systematically weakened political parties and democratic political
culture that could bring any meaning change.

37. Local government system in Pakistan after 2018
• In Punjab, the Local Government Act of 2019 codified the new system.
Other provinces have not yet introduced the new Local Government Acts.
• The 2019 Act dissolved the existing local government institutions and gave
the Punjab government until April 2020 to hold elections for the
constitution of new local governments.
• It reintroduced the rural-urban distinction and prescribed establishment of
Metropolitan/ Municipal/Town Corporations/Committees for urban areas
and Tehsil Councils for rural areas.
• In a clear departure from earlier local government regimes, the head of
each local government will be directly elected by the people. The elected
head will have a cabinet to assist him in the discharge of functions (an
extensive list [including education, but excluding healthcare] provided in
Schedules 3, 4 and 5) by a set of councillors and professionals as specified
in the 4th Schedule to the Act (see section 19 in the Local Government Act
of 2019).

38. • In another significant departure from the past, the councillors will be
elected on a closed list proportional representation basis. Thus,
elections will be held on a political party basis, and each party will
provide a list of its candidates in order.
• Depending upon the percentage of votes a party obtains in a local
government; its nominees will become councillors for the local
governments concerned. In other words, each local government will
comprise a multi-candidate constituency.
• Another unique feature of the new system is the establishment of
panchayat and neighborhood councils for rural and urban areas,
respectively.

39. • These are envisaged as grassroots forums to ensure democratic
participation at the village and ward levels. These forums do not have
any inherent power or function under the Act.
• they can be assigned/delegated any function by a local government
forum. In other words, there will be institutions which can be used if
the Metropolitan/Municipal Corporation or a Tehsil Council intends to
do so.
• Whether the higher forums will be ready to delegate any of their
powers and functions will depend upon the pressure grassroots
forums can exert.
• History of devolution in Pakistan, however, does not provide much
ground for optimism. As the previous experience since the 1950s has
shown, each governance tier wants the higher tier to delegate
authority but is reluctant to delegate the same to lower tiers.

40. • The new law maintains the supervisory role of the provincial
government by expressly requiring local governments to comply with
provincial directions.
• This oversight extends, in particular, to financial matters. Section 137
requires the Chief Officer of every local government to send to the
provincial government for prior appraisal every estimate of receipts
and expenditure.
• The provincial government may suspend any resolution or stop any
action of a local government if the same is deemed to be ‘prejudicial
to public interest’.

41. • The Act also authorises the Minister, the Secretary or any functionary
so deputed by them to attend (and speak to) any
meeting/proceedings of a local government.
• Further, the Act envisages the creation of a new institution, namely,
the Inspectorate of Local Governments, with the exclusive function of
inspecting, monitoring and reviewing local governments.
• This Inspectorate will inspect in detail each local government at least
once every year and may commission as many special inspections as
deemed appropriate.

42. • These inspections are additional to the usual audit processes already
in vogue.
• In a sense, all this undermines the spirit of devolution by making local
government subordinate to the provincial government not only in
policy but also implementation.
• Unlike the 2001 system, the new local governments will neither be
‘governments,’ nor will they have an independent, robust revenue
stream to support their initiatives.

43. • PTI government in the Punjab suspended the existing local
government system.
• The last elections in the Punjab were held phase-wise in 2015 and
2016.
• The local governments were formed on January 1, 2017 for a five-year
term that would end on December 31, 2021.
• The local governments that were elected under the Punjab Local
Government Act 2013 were dissolved on May 3, 2019.
• In the PLGA 2019, the term of local governments was reduced to four
years.

44. • PML-N leaders filed a petition in the Supreme Court that worked for
them as a three-member bench of the Supreme Court (SC) in March
2021 directed the restoration of local governments in the Punjab.