Reporting snapshot · 13 November 2026 (Asia/Karachi). The court's order has not been published on the Islamabad High Court website, so its wording is known only through reporting of the hearing and the announcement; the Election Commission had not responded by the time of writing. The chief election commissioner's sabotage allegation was made in a separate proceeding and has not been tested.
The Islamabad High Court suspended the Election Commission of Pakistan’s schedule for local government elections in the federal capital on Friday, 13 November, staying the notification that had fixed polling for 20 December and asking the commission to answer by 26 November. Geo News reported that the court issued a notice to the commission along with the stay, after the bench reserved its verdict at a hearing on Thursday, 12 November, The News International reported. The judge who heard the petition, named by Geo News as Justice Umair Majeed Malik and by The News International as Justice Umair Majid Malik, had earlier remarked on the campaign spending of candidates.
The case began a week earlier, when a petition filed by Amjad Ali challenged the schedule over the delimitation of Islamabad’s wards and union councils. KhabarWire reported the petition on 6 November, when no ruling had been made. The Pakistan local government elections hub tracks the commission’s scheduling decisions across the country.
What the court was asked, and what it said
The petitioner’s counsel, Barrister Adil Aziz Qazi, told the bench that new delimitation had been carried out in 2024 and an election schedule announced on the strength of it, before a new Local Government Ordinance was introduced in 2026. The counsel told the court the ordinance had been approved by the cabinet and forwarded to parliament, and that its introduction had led to the withdrawal of the previous election schedule and the cancellation of the earlier delimitation. The existing Act provides for one metropolitan corporation while the ordinance envisages three, and the schedule was issued after the ordinance ceased to operate without the previous delimitation being restored, The News International reported.
Counsel also pressed the court on the cost of a poll that might later be set aside, arguing that candidates would be spending millions of rupees on campaigns. Justice Malik replied that it was not the court’s responsibility if someone chose to spend millions of rupees, and that it was alarming if a candidate spent Rs10 million on an election but declared expenditure of only Rs100,000. Counsel told the bench that a stay order had already been granted in an earlier proceeding.
The delimitation the court did not settle
The court identified what it called the key question: under which legal order the new delimitation had been conducted. That question is about the legal foundation of the constituencies, not about the timetable, and the stay order issued on Friday does not answer it.
Two practical objections to the schedule were also raised. The constituencies in the programme mix union councils and wards, and the court asked whether an election could be held in such a ward, then asked counsel to identify the legal provision requiring a proposer and seconder to belong to the same ward. Counsel argued that voter lists had not been provided by the time the schedule was announced, leaving voters unaware of their respective wards, and that very few candidates had filed nomination papers initially, which prompted an extension of the deadline to the 8th, The News International reported.
KhabarWire’s earlier reporting on the petition described the size of the dispute: the final lists issued through Form 09 on 14 October showed 130 union councils under three town corporations, while the 2015 Act provides for 125 union councils and 1,125 general wards, as reported at the time. The commission’s own decision on 21 October was to hold the polls in the capital under that 2015 law and to issue a fresh schedule the same day, Geo News reported. The programme was then revised: nomination papers to be filed by Sunday the 8th, scrutiny of nominations from the 11th to the 16th, and polling on 20 December, Radio Pakistan reported.
A stay order against a commission that says the poll will happen
The commission has been publicly committed to the opposite of the court’s order. Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja accused the federal government of trying to sabotage the Islamabad local government elections by withholding teaching staff for polling duty, saying the commission issues directions to the prime minister and the government but the government did not respond to them. “Where will the ECP bring staff from?” he asked, The News International reported, adding that the federal government wanted to sabotage the polls and that “I make it clear that local government elections will be held in Islamabad.”
Those remarks were made on Thursday while Raja was heading a three-member bench in the Gujranwala NA-77 by-election case on alleged violations of the election code of conduct, not in the local government elections petition itself. On that case the commission told the bench that Information Minister Attaullah Tarar and Farooq Tarar had visited the constituency, which Tarar’s counsel Sajeel Swati disputed on the ground that the minister was abroad accompanying the prime minister to Türkiye. The commission gave the minister’s counsel ten days to respond and adjourned the hearing to 1 December, Pakistan Today reported. Pakistan Today also reported that Raja continues as chief election commissioner under the 26th Amendment although his constitutionally mandated five-year term expired on 26 January 2025.
The commission’s own administrative workload has not let up. It uploaded an updated list of 160 enlisted political parties in which the heads of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party are not named, and the MQM-P faces a show-cause notice over its failure to hold intra-party elections, with directions to respond within 14 days, The News International reported.
The dates that now govern the case
The commission’s response is due on 26 November. Nomination scrutiny under the suspended programme runs from the 11th to the 16th of this month, so the parties’ nominations are being processed against a schedule the court has stayed. Polling on 20 December cannot be confirmed while the stay stands.
Two wider pressures sit behind the capital’s delay. The term of the last elected local government in the Islamabad Capital Territory expired in February 2021, and Section 219(4) of the Elections Act, 2017 requires the commission to hold new local body elections within 120 days of that expiry, a requirement long since missed. And the wider calendar is moving in more than one direction: on 5 November the commission set 7 February 2027 for the first phase of Punjab’s local body elections and suspended preparations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as KhabarWire reported, while about Rs18.5 billion approved for local election activity has been released only to the tune of Rs2 billion, KhabarWire reported.
What the order does not settle
The order’s text is not public, and the grounds on which the schedule was stayed are not known from the reporting so far. Whether the court will treat the delimitation question as part of the same proceeding, and whether it will entertain an election on the existing boundaries if the commission objects, are both open. So is the question of what happens to nominations already filed and to candidates who have begun campaigning.
The staffing dispute is separate and unresolved. The chief election commissioner says the federal government withheld teachers; the government has not answered that allegation in public, and the commission has not yet put a case on it in the local government petition. And the statutory clock that was already overdue when the schedule was issued remains overdue: a stay against one schedule does not by itself settle how long the capital goes without elected local representatives.
