Azam Suleman has a short stay in Punjab as chief secretary

ISLAMABAD: Maj (R) Azam Suleman, who has been replaced by Jawad Rafique Malik as the chief secretary of Punjab, has a short stay of just five months in the province’s topmost bureaucratic position.

His predecessor Yousaf Naseem Khokhar had served as the chief secretary for thirteen months before he was moved to the federal government. Before that, Akbar Hussain Durrani, who was appointed by the caretaker government, remained in this office for four months.

With Azam Suleman’s going out and Jawad Rafique Malik’s coming in, Punjab has got the fourth chief secretary in 20-month rule of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Jawad Rafique Malik was serving as the federal communications secretary presided over by Minister Murad Saeed before his shifting to Punjab.

Azam Suleman has been changed amid the ongoing concerted campaign against COVID-19 pandemic he was leading from the front. His track record shows that he builds an excellent team work with his colleagues.

His colleagues say he is reputed to be a hard task master and no nonsense type of officer, an approach that ended his incumbency as the Punjab chief secretary. He is known as an effective officer and a man of strong likes and dislikes.

He rarely gets along well with politicians and would not allow them to mess around with his secretaries and field officers. He loathes political interference and pursues his own policies. But he was a favourite of former chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, who always posted him in the departments which he himself directly supervised because no minister or adviser felt comfortable with Azad Suleman.

As the interior secretary, Azad Suleman is credited with ironing out key issues pertaining to the national visa policy and Kartarpur corridor. In a short span of time, he became one of those federal secretaries Prime Minister Imran Khan liked. He thus earned the assignment of the Punjab’s top man, which is considered most important bureaucratic position in the country.

The prime minister had posted Azam Suleman after a high-profile announcement that the government has decided to transform Punjab and its administration. He had publicly declared that the new chief secretary and Inspector General of Police (IGP) will be given free hand and no undue political interference will be tolerated in their professional work.

The new chief secretary and IGP had been brought to lead the Punjab administration amid reports of poor governance under the Usman Buzdar administration.

Azam Suleman had been the longest serving home secretary in the Shahbaz Sharif administration, from 2013 to 2018. Prior to that, he had worked as the secretary of irrigation and communications and works and was credited with many development projects during that era.

During the 2018 general elections, he was appointed the chief secretary of Sindh. The present government made him interior secretary since he had done well as the Punjab home secretary. Azam Suleman was inducted in the civil service from the army directly in grade 18 by Nawaz Sharif in 1991. At the time, he, as major, was working as the ADC to Lt-Gen Hameed Gul when the latter had headed the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Officials privy to the development say that for the last few months it was not business as usual between Buzdar and Azam Suleman. They say that the chief minister and cabinet members felt marginalised because of Azam Suleman’s style of running the administration.

According to these officials, Thursday’s meeting of Buzdar with the prime minister turned out to be decisive to change the chief secretary.

They say that with Azam Suleman’s transfer, a message has been conveyed that Buzdar continues to be the man presiding over the Punjab with full powers and also kills the grapevine that the chief minister is on his way out. The prime minister has communicated to all and sundry that he is fully behind Waseem Ikram Plus.

Azam Suleman, who has a year to go before he retires, is not known to remain in wilderness for long as a day after his transfer from Punjab, he was given the same position - interior secretary - from where he had been sent to the majority province.

The chief secretary, who is the top bureaucrat in the province and is considered a representative of federal government in the province, is also the “cabinet secretary” for the provincial administration. He supervises 40 plus departments and all commissioners and deputy commissioners in Punjab.

A Punjab government official told The News that Azam Suleman’s transfer and Jawad Rafique Malik’s nomination in his place was a normal development. “It is the government’s privilege to post and change bureaucrats to implement its agenda.”