PESHAWAR, May 21: The announcement last week by the NWFP government cancelling liquor licences appears to have hit legal and constitutional snags.

The government announced last week it was cancelling the liquor licences of two hotels in Peshawar, the only two officially-sanctioned liquor outlets in the entire NWFP for selling alcohol to foreigners and non-Muslim Pakistanis.

Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani directed chief secretary Shakeel Durrani to cancel the licences, and the chief secretary in turn asked the department concerned to initiate a summary.

But instead of waiting for the summary, the government went ahead and announced that it had cancelled all liquor licences.

What is more, officials from the excise department rushed to the two hotels and sealed their liquor outlets without any written orders. Senior officials in the law department now admit that no written orders were issued to either cancel liquor licences or seal the bars at the two hotels.

Officials referred to Article 37 (H) of the Constitution which exempts non-Muslims from the ban on liquor.

They have also drawn the attention of the chief minister to the Prohibition (Enforcement of Hadd Order, 1979) wherein, according to Section 4, a non-Muslim foreigner or a non-Muslim citizen of Pakistan is allowed “a reasonable quantity of intoxicating liquor, for the purpose of using it as a part of ceremony prescribed by his religion.”

It was also pointed out that the matter involved the rights of the minorities as guaranteed in the Constitution.

The chief secretary endorsed the opinion regarding the rights of the minorities, without adding anything further to the issue. Law secretary Amir Gulab Khan, who has considerable knowledge of the Islamic jurisprudence and had remained a ‘Qazi’ in the Shariat court in Malakand division, wrote that liquor licences could be cancelled under certain conditions as given in Sections 17 and 19 of the Prohibition Order, 1979.

The conditions include non-payment of fee by a licencee, any breach by the holder or his servant of the terms of the licence, if the holder is convicted of any offence under the order or the purpose for which the licence was granted ceases to exist.

What the law secretary apparently did not tell the chief minister was that in order to meet the conditions laid out for the cancellation of licences, the government would have to frame charges against the licencees.

Officials in the law department privately admit that the decision to cancel liquor licences was not based on any report of breach of the terms.

Caught in a legal and constitutional quagmire, the chief minister wrote that the matter be brought before the cabinet for discussion. However, when the cabinet met last Friday, the issue was not put up for discussion.

So, the liquor outlets at the two hotels remain sealed and their licences purportedly stand cancelled, but there is no official written order or notification to enforce the closures.

The law department is now working overtime to find a solution to the government’s dilemma, and the issue is likely to be discussed in cabinet on Thursday.