ISLAMABAD: The Punjab bureaucracy is bent upon illegally assuming the control of the police. Around 35 retired IGPs, including Nisar Cheema, Abbas Khan, Syed Masud Shah, Shaukat Javed and Ahmed Nasim, have expressed concern over the drafting of the Civil Administration Ordinance 2016 by a section of the bureaucracy that aims to undermine the authority of the recently-elected LB representatives and to reintroduce the office of erstwhile deputy commissioners by assuming the control of all the including the police, which is a provincial institution responsible to the government through the IGP.
Instead of confining themselves to the role of coordination, the proposed DCs want to be head of the district administration as representatives of government thereby undermining the elected offices of mayors of corporations and chairmen of district councils.
Above all, they want to gain control of the district police officers (DPOs) which amounts to gross violation of the chain of command and authority of the police stipulated in Police Order 2002.
The retired IGPs urge the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and his cabinet not to accept this bureaucratic move to undermine democracy and local government system through promulgation of an ordinance instead of debating the matter in the provincial assembly before enacting a new law. Such blatant violation of the Constitution and existing police and local government laws should not be allowed, they urged.