PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Tuesday passed the KP Police Act 2017 with a majority vote after the opposition benches rejected it.

When law minister Imtiaz Shahid Qureshi tabled the bill in the house, opposition benches went up against it.

Speaker Asad Qaiser put the matter to the vote with the treasury benches managing to secure its approval by a majority vote.

After the passage of the bill, KP became the first province in the country to make its own police law scrapping Musharraf’s era Police Order 2002.

This legislation promulgated through an ordinance earlier in August 2016 was granted one-time extension to the law earlier in October was set to lapse on Jan 28.

Legislation does away with Musharraf’s Police Order 2002

A select committee of the house headed by Chief Minister Pervez Khattak had the approved the bill in its meeting on Jan 18 after months long deliberations.

However, the review of the law made by the house reveals that not much in it is different from original version of ordinance, which bestows the provincial police chief with massive powers.

The select committee has made only some minor changes to the law.

Interestingly, a large number of lawmakers had proposed about 78 amendments in at least 42 clauses of the legislation; however, the select committee did not take most of them into account despite protests of the opposition lawmakers.

A newly inserted Section 4 provides for direct induction in the rank of the deputy superintendent of police (DSPs) on need basis, providing that the number shall not exceed five percent of the total posts in that cadre.

The powers of the chief minister, which in the ordinance were inserted in Section 72 towards the end of the law have been now mentioned at Section 9 at the start of the act and in contrast to the ordinance police a proviso added to Section 9(2)(iii) empowers chief minister to suspend police officers in case of gross misconduct.

The proviso notes that chief minister, may in case of grave misconduct or in cases where he deems the officer may affect the inquiry proceedings, direct the police officer may temporarily be closed to police headquarters in which the case inquiry shall be held within a period of seven days and if access, neglect or abuse of authority is proved in the aforesaid inquiry, recommend to the competent authority for appropriate action in the accordance with the rules.

Sub-section 3 also binds the chief minister to attend at least two meetings of the provincial Public Safety Commission in a year.

Section 15 provides for the posting of the provincial police officer, wherein government form a panel of three police officers recommended by the National Public Safety Commission (NPSC) from a list of three officers provided by the federal government, post a police officer of the IGP as the PPO.

A new proviso inserted laid downs that where the NPSC is not constituted, the federal government shall provide complete list of BPS-21 and above officers appointment of the one of them as PPO.

The proviso has apparently been inserted while keeping hostile views of most of opposition lawmakers towards giving the center upper hand in the appointment of the police chief.

Under Section 17 of the Act, PPO has been given all operational, administrative and financial powers as ex-officio secretary to the government and he has been empowered to transfer and post officers up to the rank of additional inspector general of police in BS-21.

Public safety bodies at provincial and district level, which had lost most of their powers in the ordinance, have not seen any worthwhile change in the bill reported by the select committee and adopted by the house. In a minor change, capital city district public safety commission has been empowered to forward complaints against the head of district police to provincial commission.

In addition, counter militancy and terrorism has been included in police duties, while several reforms initiatives started by police chief Nasir Khan Durrani, including nine specialised training schools and Counter Terrorism Department, and the elite force have been legal cover in the law.

In a statement issued following the passage of the bill, KP police chief assured lawmakers that the force would try its best to live up to their expectations.

Published in Dawn January 25th, 2017