LAHORE, Jan 29: The Punjab government has approved a proposal by the IGP to appoint five additional IGs and nine DIGs under them in the field, forwarding it to the federal government for the creation of vacancies.

“The proposal is a good one and has been approved by the chief minister. The appointments will help regulate police in major cities, including Lahore,” a senior officer informed Dawn on Sunday.

Chief Secretary Salman Siddique said the proposal had been sent to the Establishment Division for the creation of seats and arranging the required number of additional IGPs of BS-21 and DIGs of BS-20.

Punjab has three additional IGs — AIG Police, AIG Investigations and AIG Special Branch. But there is not a single officer available in BS-21 to fill the new posts in the field.

DIGs Asrar Ahmad, Talat Mahmood, Khwaja Khalid Farooq, Muhammad Wasim, Fayyaz Mir and Mirza Muhammad Ali are stated to be the senior most officers working in the Punjab. And officials said they would most probably be promoted to the next higher grade by the federal promotion board at its meeting likely to be held early next month because they had already attended advance promotion courses in the Defence College.

The DIGs supposed to work under the new AIGs would be selected from amongst the Punjab’s present strength of OSD DIGs, including Irfan Mahmood, Aftab Sultan, Shamsul Hassan, Chaudhry Tanvir, Javaid Noor and Chaudhry Sajjad. The posts could also be filled through promotions or officers in other provinces or in the federal government.

The IGP had a fortnight ago proposed the appointment of AIGs of BS-21 in Lahore — the capital city according to the Police Order 2002 — and police ranges in Rawalpindi, Multan, and Faisalabad, besides the Punjab Constabulary. These five places have over 10,000 police employees and, the IGP said, the department required appointment of an AIG under the police order.

Each of the additional IG in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan and Faisalabad will have two DIGs of BS-20 under them — DIG Operations and DIG Investigations.

At present, the Lahore Capital City and the Rawalpindi, Multan and Faisalabad police ranges are headed by a DIG of BS-20. Under the Lahore DIG are SSPs operations and investigations.

The incumbent DIGs would automatically become DIGs operations while new postings would be made against the posts of DIGs investigations.