RAWALPINDI, Oct 2: The Lahore High Court Rawalpindi bench on Thursday granted interim relief to four employees of the Rawalpindi and Chaklala cantonments, staying their transfer orders.

The employees Mohammad Boota, record keeper Mohammad Sadiq, UDC Arshad Tareen and tracer Rana Mohammad Sarfaraz had challenged the transfer orders of the director-general, Military Lands and Cantonments (ML&Cs), and prayed for stay order.

The judge of the Lahore High Court, Justice Ali Nawaz Chohan, granted interim relief to the employees staying the transfer orders. He also directed the DG to submit parawise comments as to why he transferred the low-scale employees which was beyond his authority. The petitioners were represented by Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui advocate.

Presenting his arguments, Mr Siddiqui said the cantonment employees from grades four to 10 were non-transferable and, as such, the DG ML&Cs had no powers to issue their transfer orders.

Cantonments are civic bodies with autonomous status and employees once recruited for a specific cantonment cannot be transferred to other stations.

Further arguing, Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui said powers of transferring employees of the cantonments had been withdrawn from the purview of the DG in 1995. Based on this, the transfer orders of the four employees should be reversed, he prayed.

On this, the single bench granted interim relief to the affected persons and directed the respondent to submit a reply by October 13, 2003.