LAHORE - Following Punjab government's planned move to clip the powers of district and town nazims, the latter have decided to thwart all attempts to curtail their powers and to oppose the proposed plan for wrapping up system of district govt. Out of nine town nazims, eight have agreed on firming up joint strategy to foil alleged manipulation to delegate their powers to civil bureaucracy, especially to the TMOs and the DCOs, and ultimately abolishing the local government system. It may be recalled that out of the total nine town nazims, one belongs to the Pakistan Peoples Party, while eight are from the Pakistan Muslim League-Q. The PML-Q backed town nazims are learnt to have decided to suggest city nazim Mian Amer Mahmood to call a coordination meeting to put their heads together for chalking out an action plan against the unconstitutional moves. Previously, the town nazims and union nazims of Data Gung Bukhsh Town, Ravi Town, Nishtar Town, Shalimar Town, Samanabad Town, Allama Iqbal Town, Gulberg Town and Aziz Bhatti Town did not show any reaction even when there were some serious moves to bring no-confidence motions against them after the 18th February elections. The sources said that town nazims have come into action following withdrawal of their powers to monitor and execute the Sunday bazaar committees and delegating this authority to TMOs, which is being termed a first practical step to overshadow the role of local representatives. Well-placed sources revealed that big wigs of the PML-Q were behind the motivation of district leadership showing their brave-heartedness now. "They pushed up the nazims and town nazims to activate themselves," the sources added. The coalition government is considering proposal to withdraw executive powers from district governments in order to reform the local bodies system. A committee formed by the provincial government had recommended that the authority of nazims should be confined to development work only and that executive powers vested in them should be transferred to the district co-ordination officers (DCOs). The sources said that a report would soon be sent to the government, which would then be forwarded to the federal government for approval. When asked to comment on the development, Data Gunj Buksh Town Nazim Tariq Sana Bajwa replied that taking back the powers of town nazims and other elected members of district and giving them to unelected members was unconstitutional. He said that Supreme Court verdict by Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar and Justice Javaid Iqbal in 2004 clarified that neither the powers of elected members could be sliced down nor transferred to unelected people. He said that it was pity that despite the clear verdict of apex court, powers to function Sunday bazaars committees were taken back from town nazims and union nazims. He said that union nazims of Shadman committee and Gulshan-e-Ravi committee had to approach the court and got stay order after their powers to run the committees were delegated to TMO and officer of regulation wing. He said that if the decision were not rolled back, more stay orders would follow, thus gave rise to confrontation. Former member of Local Bodies Commission Col (r) Muhammad Shahbaz said that all the measures being taken to limit the powers of nazims and town nazims were in sheer violation of local government ordinance 2001. He said that province was being ruled by the formula of 'might is right'. He said if any move were required to put into practice, a legal course needed to be adopted. He said that in case any major change in the functioning of local bodies was required to be made including clipping of powers of the nazims vis-a-vis the civil servants working under them, DCO was bound to submit recommendations to the Local Government Commission under section 135 (removal of difficulty). The LGC, in turn, would look into the matter and place it before Chief Minister for final decision, he added. The LGC did not exit right now, so the Government could not implement its planned move to curtail the powers of the nazims. About the abolishment of local government system, he said that only the President had authority to wrap it up by scraping schedule 6 from the constitution. He said that parliament could also discard the system by two third majority.