District governors to be deprived of the council chairman status in 2026

Deputy Jakhongir Shirinov, who provided a report on the renewal of the Constitution in the Parliament of Uzbekistan, listed some changes to the main law.

“According to the draft Constitution, the practice of governors leading councils of people’s deputies in local government bodies will be terminated, and it is determined that the councils will be headed by a separate council chairman who is independent of the governor.

To put it simply, now the deputies elected by the people in the region and district (city) will have the opportunity to directly and objectively control the activities of the governor. Now the executive power in the region is headed by governors, and the representative body is headed by chairmen of local councils who are independent of the governor. And the reporting of governors to the local council places great responsibility on them.

It should be noted that it is no secret that the working order of local councils has adapted to the current system. Therefore, the positions of the chairman of the council and the governor cannot be separated from each other at once, for this, it will be necessary to revise the legal framework, train personnel, and solve material-technical issues. Most importantly, in order to avoid duplication of tasks between two bodies in the regions, their powers and duties should be clearly separated.

Accordingly, it is determined that the separation of the positions of the chairman of the councils and the governor will be applied to the state power bodies of Tashkent city and regions according to the results of the elections to the next local councils in 2024, and to the representative and executive bodies of the district and city from January 1, 2026.

Another issue: in the previously published version of the project, it was indicated that the review of the local budget by the council of people’s deputies will be carried out only upon the presentation of the governor. This directly tied the authority of the deputies to the governor. Now this kind of subordination is excluded, that is, the new text of this norm states that the authority of the council of people’s deputies to “review and adopt local budgets, exercise control over their execution” will be exercised without any conditions or obstacles. This rule is also applied to the process of approving regional programs,” Jakhongir Shirinov said.