LAHORE: As many as 15 senior police officers, including two BS-22 and three former inspectors general (IGs), are awaiting posting due to non-availability of vacant positions of Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) in high grades.

This is for the first time that such a good number of top-ranked police officers are serving as officials on special duty [in one go] in Islamabad as the government has not delegated them responsibilities in caretaker set-up due to certain reasons.

Most of them were surrendered to the establishment division by the four provincial governments for further postings, a senior official told Dawn.

In a first, so many officials are awaiting posting

He said many of them were grade-20 and 21 police officers who recently served in the provinces on important slots.

Interestingly, two grade-22 police officials, including Iqbal Mehmood and AD Khwaja are also among them who are serving as OSD.

Besides, Balochistan former IGP Muazam Ansari and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ex-IGP Salahuddin Khan Mehsud are also awaiting posting.

However, the Punjab former IGP appeared to be ‘lucky enough’ to get appointment as secretary (narcotics division) by replacing Iqbal Mahmood who was directed to report to the establishment division for further posting.

The official said the Punjab government had on June 20 surrendered 18 police officers of BS-19 to BS-21 to Islamabad.

Still most of them are serving as OSDs and spending time with their families as the federal government failed to appoint them citing non-availability of vacant positions in high grades as one of the major reasons, he said.

A major factor behind reshuffle of most of these senior police officers was said to be their [alleged] ‘direct and indirect links’ with a political party.

However, four of them had preferred to be surrendered to Islamabad as they had refused to work under the command of newly-appointed IGP Punjab saying he was “most junior to them.”

They are: former additional IG discipline and inspection Ijaz Hussain Shah, ex-Punjab Constabulary Commandant Hussain Asghar, former additional IG special branch Faisal Shahkar and former Lahore Capital City Police Officer Amin Wains.

The official said there are nearly a dozen seats of BS-22 belonging to PSP and 45 of BS-21 all over the country, with a handsome share in the largest province [Punjab].

Incidentally, all the BS-22 seats of the police service were previously occupied, minimising chance of the police officers (awaiting postings) to get new assignments.

These slots included IGPs of all four provinces and Azad Jamu & Kashmir, director general FIA, DG IB, National Highway & Motorway Police, secretary narcotics division, the National Counter Terrorism Authority IG etc.

However, many senior police officers could have been accommodated against BS-21 and BS-22 slots.

Unfortunately, most of them were reportedly being manned by their junior colleagues, forcing senior police officers to stay at homes and wait for another reshuffle that is expected after formation of the next government.

Citing a reference in this regard, the official said BS-21 officer Mohammad Tahir is holding IGP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa slot in the presence of two grade-22 officers.

The same is the case with Punjab where many grade-20 police officers were working against BS-21 seats in the presence of their senior colleagues.

Particularly, the slots of regional police officers (RPOs) in Punjab were being managed by the junior officers, the official said adding that in case elections were delayed owing to any reason, the senior police officers would have to further suffer for a certain period.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2018