The Election Commission of Pakistan has ordered local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but the order is not a polling date and it does not cover the whole province. Announced on Wednesday, October 28, by a five-member bench headed by Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja, it splits the province into three tracks: districts where voting can be prepared now, districts where even the boundary work is frozen, and districts still waiting for their delimitation schedules. Those 12 are not one group facing one rule. They fall into two different legal buckets, and the reason each bucket exists matters for when, or whether, those voters get a local council at all.
Two buckets, not one exclusion
The first bucket holds five districts where elections will not be scheduled under the federal government order dated October 11: Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Mohmand, Orakzai and North Waziristan. The second bucket holds seven districts where the Commission directed that delimitation schedules should not be issued for the time being: Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bajaur, Khyber, Kurram, Upper South Waziristan and Lower South Waziristan. A district in the first bucket is barred from the election programme by a dated federal order. A district in the second bucket is stuck one step earlier, because its council boundaries have not been drawn and the Commission has told its office not to start that drawing yet. That matters on the ground: Bannu schools repair bill of Rs4.509 billion shows a barred district already waiting on basic services, while a cross border infiltration attempt foiled in Kurram shows why a frozen district sits at the sharp end of the security argument.
Why delimitation stalled: the threshold trap
During the hearing, Election Commission Special Secretary Zafar Iqbal told the bench delimitation was complete in 23 districts. The remaining work ran into a legislative clash. The provincial government amended Section 6(5)(e) of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act, 2023, raising the population threshold for delimiting village and neighbourhood councils from 5,000 to 15,000 residents to 30,000 to 40,000 residents. The Commission found that revised threshold inconsistent with the number of village and neighbourhood councils specified in Schedule IX of the provincial Act, making delimitation under the amended threshold impracticable. It asked the province to amend the council numbers in Schedule IX to match the new threshold. That gap is why the order still separates districts with settled boundaries from districts whose boundaries cannot yet be drawn.
What can actually go ahead now
For delimited districts, the Commission directed its office to submit the election programme for approval. That is a programme, not a date: no polling day was announced, and the programme still needs approval before nominations, campaigning and polling can be scheduled. For incomplete districts other than the frozen seven, it directed its office to issue delimitation schedules. It also ordered the adjustment and determination of village and neighbourhood councils and category-wise reserved seats in the relevant tehsil councils in Karak, Hangu, Swat, Bar Swat, Battagram, Paharpur and Allai, worked out under current revenue limits and a separate Commission order of the same date.
What the 12 districts get instead
The 12 excluded districts are covered by the arrangement created after the federal government imposed emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on October 11, 2026. President Asif Ali Zardari proclaimed the emergency and governor’s rule on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif under Articles 232 and 234 of the Constitution. The federal government set up an Area Development Secretariat for the 12 designated districts, with an Area Representative and Development Council as their representative structure. It does not dissolve that arrangement. It also heard the provincial government’s request to defer the polls, citing law and order, the emergency and the deployment of troops under Article 245, and it refused that deferral for districts where delimitation is complete. The emergency followed a sharp political rupture, including Sohail Afridi taken into preventive custody after the KP emergency.
Three things to watch next
First, watch for approval of the election programme and, with it, a polling date. Until then, voters there have an order, not a schedule. Second, watch whether the province amends Schedule IX to match the new council population threshold, and whether delimitation schedules appear for the incomplete districts outside the frozen seven. If neither moves, the boundary logjam stays in place even where the Commission wants polls. Third, watch what arrangement, if any, is announced for the 12 districts, and how long their residents wait. Local bodies have already been without elected councils for months: terms of bodies elected in the first phase expired in March 2026, and those formed in the second phase completed their terms in June. For continuing coverage, follow national news from Pakistan.
