LAHORE, March 6: Special Secretary Muhammad Khan Bhatti has been appointed Punjab Assembly secretary in place of Saeed Ahmed who retires on Friday (today).

A notification to the effect has been issued.

According to the notification, the most senior officer in the assembly secretariat, Additional Secretary (legislation) Malik Maqsood Ahmed, has been promoted to grade-20 and posted as special secretary.

The outgoing secretary has served at the post for around four years.

He joined the Assembly Secretariat as junior clerk in grade-7 in 1967.

His successor, Mr Bhatti, was also a grade-7 clerk in the Agriculture Department when then Punjab Assembly speaker Pervaiz Elahi inducted him into the Assembly Secretariat in grade-11 in 1997.

Thanks to the patronage of the Chaudhry who became the Punjab chief minister in 2002, he attained grade-20 in less than a decade, an unprecedented rise seen by any bureaucrat, and was appointed special secretary in the Chief Minister’s Secretariat, a post specially created to accommodate him.

Mr Bhatti has been promoted to grade-21 and posted as the assembly secretary.

The notification also says that the personal staff officer to the speaker, Ali Imran Rizvi, has been promoted as additional secretary. Amer Habib, the son of former assembly secretary Habibullah, known for being kidnapped in the Manzoor Wattoo era in an assembly dissolution case, has also been promoted as deputy secretary.