15 July 2004	Thursday	26 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

PESHAWAR, July 14: The Chief Justice of Peshawar High Court, Justice Mian Shakir Ullah Jan, on Wednesday took oath as acting governor of the NWFP on Wednesday.

The oath was administered amid reservations by the MMA government which insisted that "the honour of becoming the acting governor should have gone to the Speaker of the NWFP Assembly, Bakht Jehan Khan".

Justice Nasirul Mulk later took oath as acting chief justice of the Peshawar High Court. Justice Shakir Ullah Jan will fill in for Governor of NWFP, Lt-Gen Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, who has proceeded on a 10-day visit to England that also includes four days' official visit.

He is scheduled to return on July 24. The oath-taking ceremony was attended, among others, by Chief Minister Mohammad Akram Khan Durrani, some ministers and bureau crats. Chief Minister Durrani did express his reservations about the speaker not having been made the acting governor.

"The president has the power to appoint a person as governor or acting governor of a province, but the constitutional requirements need to be kept in mind," he said while talking to journalists after the oath-taking ceremony.

"Traditionally, in the absence of a governor, the speaker of a provincial assembly acts as acting governor," Mr Durrani remarked. He said that he had always believed in the supremacy of the Constitution and that he saw no problem in the speaker having been made the acting governor.

He said that Speaker Bakht Jehan Khan had served as acting governor in the past as well. "The president should not have had the powers to violate the Constitution," he remarked when he had been asked whether the president had violated the Constitution by not appointing the speaker as the acting governor.

"All of us need to keep our constitutional requirements and obligations in mind before exercising our powers," he said. He said that his government had always preferred to resolve all matters with the federal government through political means.