A pending petition: IGP’s appointment linked to court decision

LAHORE: Lahore High Court Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah on Thursday made the appointment of the new inspector general of Punjab police conditional with a court decision on a petition challenging the same.

The CJ remarked there seems to some negligence towards fully implementing the Police Order 2002. The court issued a notice on the petition of one Muhammad Razzaq and asked amicus curie Advocate Khawaja Harris and Advocate Asma Jahangir to file their reply before the court.

Appearing on behalf of the petitioner, Advocate Saad Rasool said the Punjab IG Mushtaq Ahmed Sukhera was going to retire on April 10 and the government had started the process of appointing his successor without fulfilling legal formalities.

During the last hearing of the petition, the CJ remarked that appointments of the inspector general of police and CCPOs must be done through the Punjab Public Safety Commission (PPSC). However, the PPSC was never formed and common people were kept an arm’s length away from the process.

Arguing the petition, Advocate Saad Rasool submitted that under the Police Order 2002, the formation of district public safety commission, district police complaints commission, provincial public safety commission, provincial police complaints authority, national public safety commission, police complaints authority and citizen police liaison committees were mandatory. However, none of these exist, he pointed out.

He said that according to the order, appointment and posting of the provincial police officer and capital city police officer cannot be made without involving the national and provincial public safety commissions, respectively. Similarly, the appointment and posting of the city police officer and district police officer is linked to the district public safety commission.

Once appointed, the PPO, CCPO and DPOs would be appointed for a term of three years and could only be removed by the provincial government after an agreement is reached with the public safety commission concerned. “In the absence of the relevant statutory bodies, the provisions concerning security of the tenure of police officers were being completely ignored and violated,” he said.

He said the average period of the posting of a PPO from January 2011 to December 2013 was seven-and-a-half months. For CCPOs/Additional IGPs of the four provincial capitals, the average tenure was seven months. “In Lahore, eight officers had been were posted as CCPO, Lahore in three years, giving each an average of 4.5 months,” the lawyer pointed out.

Saad further stated that that formal/functional appointments for heads of the District Investigation Branch (DIB) have not been made across the thirty-six (36) districts in Punjab. He said this was mandatory according to the PO 2002.

He requested the court to declare the respondent federal and provincial governments to ensure implementation of the Police Order in letter and spirit to ensure depoliticisation, democratic accountability and autonomy of the police in Punjab.

Source: The Express Tribune