ECP officials have written a letter to the Punjab Additional Chief Secretary in which it was inquired from him as to why they were making transfers and postings of administrative officers which were nominated by ECP as Returning Officers during the local government polls.
The ECP said that the local government election procedure is not completed as they are yet to hold elections on reserved seats and mayors/chairmen of the districts. They claimed that ECP had imposed ban on transfer and postings till the entire elections process is not complete. Thus the provincial governments cannot make any transfer/postings without their approval. They had asked the provincial governments for undoing all the transfer postings done in this regard.
Meanwhile, a senior officer in Punjab has claimed that they had done transferred thirteen officers who were nominated by the ECP as ROs owing to inordinate delay in the holding of second phase of local polls. They claimed that they had conveyed the information to the ECP about the transfers but now they were creating an unnecessary issue out of it.
The Punjab government is learnt to have given assurances to the ECP that they would not make any further transfers of Returning Officers. However, they are finding it hard to cancel the transfer notifications of officers already posted on different grounds.
 has conveyed strong displeasure to the administrative hierarchy of Sindh and Punjab for violating ECP rules through making transfers of field officers notified as Returning Officers. ){kind=link}