LAHORE: Punjab faced an administrative impasse as the bureaucracy was looking towards Islamabad and the CM-elect camp for instructions and it became too evident when acting chief minister Usman Buzdar himself had resigned to the fact that he was no more an active chief minister.

CM Buzdar had not even objected to the transfers and postings of senior bureaucrats including the replacement of his principal secretary knowing well the futility of his objections, a senior bureaucrat told Dawn.

Mr Buzdar shifted to a private residence in C&W colony on the canal and visited the CM secretariat for a couple of hours daily to meet delegations. Being in office as a stopgap arrangement, Mr Buzdar had been stripped of his financial, legal and administrative powers.

The PTI and PML-Q camp took all possible measures to ensure that the slot of the chief minister should not go to the PML-N and resorted to legal wrangling. The PTI and PML-Q leadership also met Mr Buzdar and asked him to show some muscle and constitute an advisory committee to run the affairs of the province.

Though no such committee had been constituted, the civil bureaucracy in Punjab was candid enough to say that “Who will notify that advisory committee. The bureaucracy will not”.

Referring to Buzdar’s recent meeting with the chief secretary and the IGP, senior bureaucrats said it only had optics as no orders were passed. Even administrative secretaries summoned to attend the meeting had skipped. “The bureaucracy clearly knows that it is being watched by Islamabad,” a bureaucrat said.

It is learnt that CM-elect Hamza Shehbaz had already begun taking briefings from the administrative secretaries to prepare himself for Punjab’s administrative affairs.

Since Punjab has braced itself to prepare budget proposals for the next financial year, an officer asked what a finance secretary could take to the chief minister and what advice he would expect.

The bureaucracy felt Punjab’s administrative decisions had come to a grinding halt and added that nobody knew how to fund and implement decisions to provide security to the Eid congregations in the wake of suicide bombing in Karachi University.

“The cabinet committee on law and order does not exist,” an officer said.

There was always a feeling among the bureaucrats that the PTI government would not support them if they were caught in a difficult situation. For this very reason, an officer said, almost every secretary had got financial and administrative actions approved through the Punjab cabinet during the past three-and-a-half-year PTI rule.

(Imran Gabol also contributed to this report)

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2022