LAHORE, Sept 8: The top brass of Punjab bureaucracy is working on the restoration of the deputy commissioner’s office but with serious reservations about its effectiveness in the absence of executive magistracy which the political leadership is reluctant to restore, apprehending opposition by the judiciary and police.

“Either the government should fully empower the deputy commissioner (DC) or avoid holding him responsible for any law and order situation. It wants the DC to act as focal person or representative of the province in a district. But, he will not be able to come up to the expectations or do the needful without executive powers,” says a senior administrative secretary.

The officer is involved in the massive exercise being conducted to introduce a new district management setup in view of the repeal of Local Government Ordinance 2001 under which the district administration was a part of the local governments.

The new local government law that has replaced the 2001 law covers only the local councils.

“We are going to have a district management which will be weaker than ever. We have once again adopted the 1979 model of local councils. But in 1979 we had the executive magistracy to run the districts. Now, we are again going to have DCs, but sans the executive powers,” says an administrative secretary.

During investigations into what will be the shape of district administration in Punjab, Dawn has learnt that the DC’s office is most probably going to be introduced through an act of the assembly.

There will be no executive magistracy or district magistrate under the new setup, stated reason being that the powers of the district magistrate were distributed among police and the judiciary while winding up its office in 2001. The judiciary was even given some executive powers of the DM. And now the political leadership is reluctant to withdraw these powers as it does not want to “provoke” the powerful police and the judiciary.

Again, the government will require to amend the CRPC to restore the executive magistracy which only the National Assembly can do.

“We will have to see what the prime minister thinks of it,” a senior official said.

Now, the bureaucracy is working on transfer of the administrative and management powers of the defunct offices of nazims and DCOs to the DC, making him head of all development projects in a district. According to officials, these powers may include heading special campaigns of the provincial government against epidemics like dengue, polio and relief and rehabilitation operations during natural calamities such as floods and earthquakes.

It is only hoped that the police who still are independent of civil administration under the Police Order 2001 will cooperate with the DC, merely because of the style of governance of the present chief minister under all such emergency situations.

It is not clear as to how police will work under the DC, who is going to act as the chief executive of a district in grave law and order situations.

The DC will head several committees which the DCOs are heading at present through executive orders. The DC may also be given the district nazim’s powers to enforce Section 144 for three days.

He or she may be responsible for supervising provincial government offices in districts.

Officials said the district health and education committees would run their own show. And there was a need to put them under the DCs as their coordination would be a major challenge for the provincial government.

In the meantime, all departments are working on how to adjust their functions which were devolved to the districts in 2001 and have now been withdrawn under the new local government law.

“The most powerful tier of the state now is the provincial government. It got federal powers under the 18th Amendment. And after that it was supposed to share its weight of responsibilities with the districts. But it is instead doing otherwise,” an official remarked.