LAHORE: Hectic meetings were held in the Civil Secretariat and the IG office on Thursday to find a way to avoid making public the judicial inquiry report of the Model Town incident with the dominant view to file an appeal against the Lahore High Court order.

The final decision would be taken by the government (the chief minister), said a senior official who was rushing to Model Town to attend a related meeting called by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif after the LHC decision shook the provincial government.

The LHC decision ordering the government to make public the report of the judicial inquiry conducted by its judge Justice Ali Baqar Najafi dominated the official work in the Civil Secretariat, the IGP office and the Chief Minister’s Secretariat as the officials concerned contacted each other for a response they could convey to the chief minister if required.

The pros and cons of making public the inquiry or not through a legal course of action were considered threadbare. The advocate general too was taken into confidence.

Directions from the chief minister and the law minister who himself is a lawyer were sought to frame a course of action accordingly.

Senior officers who requested anonymity because of what they said the seriousness of the issue, said the best step could be filing an appeal against the LHC order. But they insisted the final decision would be taken by the political leadership.

They were of the view that the government had ordered the judicial inquiry into the incident for its own consumption as per the practice. It would have to be decided at some forum whether judicial inquiries were for the governments to know details of any event gathered independently or not. The decision would reflect on the inquiry reports conducted in past matters important for the state, they said.

Later, a team of senior officials was called to the chief minister’s secretariat for a meeting on the issue.

Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2017