By: Kashmir Investigation Team (Zulfiqar Ali)
MUZAFFARABAD: Following the Azad Kashmir High Court’s decision, the Azad Kashmir government has abolished MLA funds in the local government development budget and launched a new program called “Social Sector Prime Minister Directive Projects”.
Under this project, Rs 547.45 crore was spent in the financial year 2024-25, with Rs 1.25 crore provided to each member of the assembly.
This amount was earlier spent through the members of the assembly and is still being spent through them, only the name has been changed.
It should be noted that on February 29, 2025, the High Court said in its decision that the members of the Legislative Assembly have no connection with local government projects, and the constitution also has no legal status based on which the local government development budget was spent by the members of the assembly.
The court also said that the process of identifying projects and allocating funds through the members of the assembly on the basis of the manual is against the relevant provisions of the Local Government Act, 1990, as it has no legal basis.
In its judgment, the court had said that under the Interim Constitution of Azad Jammu and Kashmir Act, 1974, the Local Government Act, 1990, and other relevant laws in force, local councilors have the exclusive power to initiate, implement, and complete development projects under local government, and a comprehensive framework has been provided for this purpose.
The High Court had said in its judgment that under the Constitution and the said Act, the concerned authorities are bound to allocate and transfer funds for all development projects to the concerned local bodies.
The High Court had also said in its judgment that the government should strictly implement the Local Government Act, 1990, and development funds should be spent only through elected local government representatives.
The court had restrained the government from allocating or releasing funds to the MLAs for local government development projects.
It seems that after this High Court decision, the Azad Kashmir government changed the name of the MLA funds to Social Sector Prime Minister Directive Projects.
It should be noted that earlier, funds were spent through the MLAs on the basis of a document.
After the court declared this document illegal and ordered that the local government development budget be spent through the local government representatives, the Azad Kashmir Assembly made this manual document a law on April 30, and this controversial law is called the Manual for Development Programs Local Government and the same Development Ordinance 2025.
Under this controversial law, local government development funds can be spent through local government representatives as well as members of the assembly.
It should be noted that this year the Local Government Department spent Rs 4,288.451 billion. According to the official document, Rs 459.87 million was spent on the projects identified by the members of the assembly, Rs 547.45 million was spent under the Social Sector Prime Minister’s Directive Projects, and Rs 1.55 billion was spent under the Prime Minister’s Community Infrastructure Program.
This amount was spent through the members of the assembly, and a total of Rs 62.5 million was provided to each member of the assembly elected from Azad Kashmir. There are 12 members of the assembly from Kashmiri refugees living in Pakistan, and each of them was provided with Rs 25 million.
In addition, Rs 1.63 billion was provided to local government representatives in the financial year 2024-2025.
The local government development budget for the last financial year was initially Rs 3.7 billion, which was later increased to Rs 4.8 billion, but Rs 4.28 billion was spent.
Many people in Azad Kashmir are of the opinion that political bribes are given to these assembly members, but the government denies this.
