Reporting snapshot · 29 October 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The commission's order was announced on Wednesday, 28 October, and it sets no polling date: the election programme still has to be prepared and submitted for approval, and the exclusion of the twelve districts under the emergency arrangement can change. The main limitation is that the Election Commission of Pakistan's own press release and written order could not be read on its website, so the terms of the decision are known only through reporting of the reserved verdict.
What the commission ordered
On Wednesday, 28 October 2026, the Election Commission of Pakistan directed its office to prepare the local government election programme for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts where constituency delimitation has been completed, and to submit that programme for the commission’s approval, The News International reported. Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja announced the reserved verdict in the K-P local government elections case, Geo News reported, after a hearing on Tuesday, 27 October, before a five-member bench headed by the chief election commissioner.
It is the first electoral step since the federal government imposed emergency and governor’s rule in the province on 11 October and notified Area Representative and Development Council members from 12 districts on 18 October. The order leaves those 12 districts outside the immediate poll schedule and moves the rest of the province into preparations.
ECP Special Secretary Zafar Iqbal told the bench that delimitation had been completed in 23 districts, where elections could proceed through an official order. The commission also directed its office to issue delimitation schedules for districts where the process remains incomplete, and ordered the adjustment and determination of village and neighbourhood councils and category-wise reserved seats in the relevant tehsil councils, including those in Karak, Hangu, Swat, Bar Swat, Battagram, Paharpur and Allai.
No polling date was announced, and no election programme has been published. What the order starts is a preparation process — electoral rolls, polling schemes and coordination with provincial officials, in the words of Pakistan Today’s account of the commission’s instructions — with the detailed schedule, covering nominations, scrutiny, polling and results, still to be issued separately.
Which districts are in, and which are out
Twelve districts are excluded from the immediate schedule: Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Lakki Marwat, Bannu, Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Kurram, Orakzai, North Waziristan, Upper South Waziristan and Lower South Waziristan. These are the districts covered by the special administrative arrangement the federal government created after the emergency, in which an Area Development Secretariat oversees administration and an Area Representative and Development Council provides local representation; the council’s 48 members were notified on 18 October.
Inside that group of twelve, the commission ruled that elections would not be scheduled in five districts — Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Mohmand, Orakzai and North Waziristan — under the federal government’s order dated 11 October. For the other seven, where delimitation is still incomplete, the ECP directed its office to issue fresh delimitation schedules: Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bajaur, Khyber, Kurram, Upper South Waziristan and Lower South Waziristan.
The two published accounts of the exclusion do not agree on the reason. Pakistan Today described the twelve excluded districts as those currently covered by the annual re-delimitation of constituencies process, and said the staggered approach was intended to prevent further delays where boundaries had already been settled. The News International and Geo News attributed the exclusion to the special administrative arrangements, with five of the twelve held back by the 11 October order and seven pending delimitation. Because the commission’s own order was not available to be read, the ground for holding back the five districts under the 11 October order could not be verified.
Why the province wanted the polls delayed
The provincial government asked the commission to defer the polls, citing law and order concerns, emergency measures and the deployment of troops, The News International reported. The request was considered at the 27 October hearing alongside the province’s amendments to local government legislation. The order has the effect of refusing a province-wide postponement: rather than delaying the polls everywhere, the commission excluded twelve districts from the immediate schedule and directed its office to move ahead with the election programme in the rest.
The province’s legislative amendments have been a documented obstacle. At an earlier review of preparations on 6 October, the ECP recalled that delimitation had been completed in 23 districts and was in progress in seven others when the provincial government amended Section 6 of the K-P Local Government Act 2013, raising the population threshold for village and neighbourhood councils from 5,000-15,000 to 30,000-40,000, The Express Tribune reported.
The gap in time makes Wednesday’s order significant. The terms of local bodies elected in the first phase expired in March 2026, and those formed in the second phase completed their terms in June, The News International reported. On other provinces the commission’s decisions have been refusals to grant delay — most visibly in Punjab, where on 15 October it rejected a request to push local government polls to April 2027. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa it has gone further and ordered the schedule itself.
What is still uncertain
Three questions remain open. First, the date. The election programme has still to be prepared and submitted for the commission’s approval, and no schedule for the 23 districts has been issued. Second, the excluded districts. The Area Representative and Development Council structure was notified only weeks ago, and holding the twelve districts out of the immediate schedule raises the question of whether they will hold a local election at all, or whether the new councils become the local representative bodies for those districts by another route. Third, the legal setting. The province has been under emergency and governor’s rule since 11 October, when President Asif Ali Zardari proclaimed emergency on the prime minister’s advice under Articles 232 and 234 of the Constitution and Governor Faisal Karim Kundi assumed responsibility for provincial affairs with an 11-member advisory council; Parliament endorsed the measures in a joint sitting on 15 October, The News International reported. Polls in the districts that do proceed will be organised by the commission and administered by the provincial machinery now headed by the governor. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa emergency file follows that arrangement.
