LAHORE: The Establishment Division, Islamabad, has turned down the requisition of the Punjab police for seven BPS-20 police officers required by the province to fill the vacant slots.

The request was made to fill the slots, including those of deputy inspectors general (DIGs) training, investigation branch, logistics and security (Lahore) and two vacancies in special branch, Punjab.

An official told Dawn the Establishment Division (ED) refused to entertain the request of Punjab, taking a stance that the province already had more than required DIGs against 42 created slots of BPS-20 officers.

Says juniors occupying senior posts caused shortage

He said the ED suggested the Punjab police senior command to create space by surrendering the surplus DIGs from the province if it wanted new officers in the rank.

The Punjab police rejected the ED proposal citing the DIGs were discharging duties efficiently and displacement of any of them might be problematic ahead of Muharram.

Through the requisition, the provincial police department had demanded services of DIGs, including Shahzada Sultan, Mohammad Idrees Ahmad, Malik Yusuf, Faisal Ali Raja, Khurram Shakoor and Malik Arslan.

The department declared these officers useful for the province for having sound experience of serving against various positions in Punjab, the official said.

The division replied to Punjab that one of the officers -- Malik Yusuf -- was presently serving as Balochistan prisons IG under rotation policy and his transfer at this time would be a violation of rules, unless he completes his tenure.

The official said the division also took up the issue of appointment of DIGs on the basis of their “own pay and scale” against senior positions across the province.

The ED was of the view that one of the major reasons behind the BPS-20 slots lying vacant in Punjab was posting of the of DIGs in their own pay and scale on BPS-21 posts, thus suggesting it to replace them with BPS-21 officers.

The DIGs who were occupying the BPS-21 slots in their own pay and scale include Rawalpindi Regional Police Officer (RPO) retired Capt Ehsan Tufail, Gujranwala RPO Tariq Abbas Qureshi, Faisalabad RPO Ghulam Mahmood Dogar, Multan RPO Wasim Sial, Punjab Counter Terrorism Department Additional IG Mohammad Tahir Rai and Special Branch Additional IG Zaeem Iqbal Sheikh.

Of them, Mr Dogar and Mr Tufail were the only officers who had passed the National Management Course (NMC), a mandatory requirement to qualify for promotion to BPS-21.

The division also offered transferring BPS-21 police officers to Punjab to accommodate them against the slots occupied by the DIGs in their own pay and scale.

The suggestion, however, irked the Punjab police authorities who argued that the division had never gone into such details while deciding transfer matters of the Pakistan Administrative Services officers.

They further argued that the rules allowed the Punjab police command to make appointment of the competent police officers in their own pay and scale against senior positions.

The official said the department decided to take up the matter with the Establishment Division so that the vacant slots could be filled across the province while retaining the DIGs serving in their own pay and scale on senior positions.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2019