LAHORE, Nov 26: A full bench of the Lahore High Court on Wednesday observed that the Police Order 2002 needed to be amended for it had certain lacunas.

“The Police Order and the Local Government Ordinance were promulgated with vested interest of a dictator,” bench’s observation met a prompt reply from Advocate-General Khwaja Haris.

The bench consisting of Justice M Bilal Khan, Justice Syed Shabbar Raza Rizvi and Justice Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry was hearing several petitions underlining bad law and order in the province and violations of the Police Order.

Justice Bilal told IG Shaukat Javed, who was present in the courtroom, that bench’s concern over the lack of implementation of the Police Order should not be misconstrued as matter of its’ ego. “On the last date of hearing, the officials, which appeared before the court, had no knowledge about developments against the backdrop of the Police Order,” the judge observed.

The bench had expressed concern about the lack of implementation of the Police Order when it came to the appointment of senior police officials to the post of district police officers (DPOs).

The IG informed the bench that they were making all efforts to appoint senior police officials but were faced with shortage of senior and able officials.

“There are 92 slots of BS-19 police officers in the province but only 58 were available,” the IGP said and added that despite all these shortcomings, 20 officers of BS-19 had been appointed DPOs.

The IG said the post of Regional Police Officer (RPO) required an official of BS-21 for appointment but with an exception of Faisalabad, all officers of the rank of senior superintendents of police (SSPs) were deputed instead.

The IG said there was a dearth of officials of Grade 19 as 20 years of service was required to reach this grade.

He said they were trying their best to implement the Police Order as evident from three meetings of the Federal Promotion Board in the last six months. He added earlier the board used to meet once or twice a year.

Justice Bilal observed if the officials were finding it too hard, he could summon establishment division’s joint secretary to find out a solution.

The IGP said they would get it done but required a little more time.

Haris said Gen Musharraf made these laws to accumulate more power and for these reason included them in the 6th Schedule of the Constitution to preclude any chances of amendments.