LAHORE, April 4: The Punjab government plans to appoint top-field officers strictly in accordance with the Police Order of 2002 in a day or two, contrary to existing favouritism-based postings, senior officials informed Dawn on Wednesday.

The plan made in the light of a Lahore High Court direction includes immediate postings of grade 21 or 20 officers as regional police officers (RPOs) and city police officers (CPOs), and interestingly grade 19 officers as district police officers (DPOs).

The implementation of the plan will also advance the police order’s agenda of localised and decentralised administration, keeping the five biggest cities in the province out of the administrative and financial control of the inspector general (IG).

Officials said the plan aimed to align the chain of command in police according to the law in force and surely it was going to shake the existing structure based on whims.

The plan, if implemented, will affect 25 DPOs as only five grade 19 officers are working against 30 posts in the province. The rest are either grade 18 officers from the Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) or promoted provincial service officers, and a majority of them is considered to be blue-eyed boys of those who matter.

According to officials, the Lahore CCPO will always be a BS-21 officer of the rank of additional inspector general like the present incumbent. Since this is the minimum requirement for the posting described by the law, a senior officer can be appointed against the post in the future.

They said the government was going to appoint BS-21 officers (additional IGs) as RPOs of II, IV and V regions while I, III, VI and VII regions would have BS-20 officers as RPOs.

The II region covers former Gujranwala range minus Gujranwala district, IV former Sargodha range and V former Multan range minus Multan district. The I region comprises Sheikhupura, II Jhelum, VI Dera Ghazi Khan and VII Bahawalpur.

The government created these regions in place of defunct ranges on Feb 10 but the seats of RPOs are still vacant. The only development made was to give additional charge of the posts of RPOs of IV, V and II regions to Faisalabad CPO Talat Mehmood Tariq, Multan CPO Muhammad Ali, and Lahore CPO Malik Muhammad Iqbal.

All the three officers are working in BS-21 and had been posted on February 11 after the declaration of Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Multan and Rawalpindi general police areas (independent units like that of the office of the IG).

Officials said a BS-21 officer (Additional IG) was going to be appointed a CPO of Rawalpindi, replacing incumbent Marwat Ali Shah, also a grade 20 officer.

With the filling in of all the posts of CPOs according to specified ranks and grades, the government will ask the officers to use their administrative and financial independence. But they will certainly remain under the operational command of the IG.

Officials said two CPOs and the Lahore CCPO empowered with financial and administrative autonomy under the law were, however, performing under the financial and administrative control of the IG as RPOs. They said the plan would end the dichotomy in a day.

The five grade 19 officers working as DPOs are: Ehsan Mehboob (Gujrat), Arif Nawaz (Bahawalpur), Amjad Javed Saleemi (Jhang), Zafar Abbas Bukhari (Bahawalnagar) and Dr Muhammad Shafiq (Sheikhupura).

According to official record, there are 42 grade 19 police officers (mainly PSP) in Punjab. But a majority of them is working in offices or against less important posts.