$ 15.0
While most countries adopt Local Government systems due to necessity and multilateral pressure, Pakistan has marginalized Local Governments time and time again, with the result that a uniform system of local governance has not been established in Pakistan. With another new regime in 2013 comes yet another experiment, perhaps the most fragmented of all past Local Government experiments to-date. The Constitution of Pakistan makes it obligatory for the Federal and Provincial authorities to devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility to the Local Governments. A cornerstone of the process of devolution is empowering people at the grassroots, and this obligation is encapsulated in Article 140-A, and to a lesser extent, in Article 37. This paper presents a comparative analysis of Local Government Laws enacted by the 4 Provincial Assemblies namely Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh as well as the new Local Government Bills for areas under federal jurisdiction namely the Cantonments Laws (Amendment) Bill 2013 and Islamabad Capital Territory Local Government Bill 2013 that have been laid in the National Assembly of Pakistan in December 2013. The comparison of these laws is based on the previous Pakistan Local Government Ordinance of 2001, the most ambitious Local Government framework instituted in Pakistan despite its imperfect nature, as well as the Indian institutions of Panchayat Raj based on the model adopted by the Indian State of Kerala.
