LAHORE: One hundred federal services officers of BPS-19 and BPS-20 are awaiting official notifications of their promotions to next grades for the last two-and-a-half months.

These officers belong to the two services groups–the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) and Police Service of Pakistan (PSP).They were among 500 officers of various other federal services groups including PAS, PSP, foreign, customs, information, secretariat etc who were recommended for the promotions to BPS-20 and BPS-21 in March of 2025 by the high-powered Central Selection Board (CSB) but they met a different fate.The board held meetings and considered the promotion cases of a large number of officers after a gap of a year and seven months.

Some reports suggested that the Establishment Division Islamabad had issued notifications of promotion of all the officers of other services groups within next few weeks when Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif accorded approval, leaving the cases of 100 PSP/PAS officers to be decided by the PM Office under the Federal Rotation Policy.

An official, privy to the development, said the federal government had made it ‘conditional with the Rotation Policy’ to meet the shortage of the BPS-20 and BPS-21 officers in smaller provinces.According to him, the objective of the policy was to check the tendency of the officers to remain in one government for years and that the shortage of the officers in all grades, of these two services, is equally distributed among all the governments.

These officers of BPS-19 and BPS-20 belong to PAS and PSP

The delay of the issuance of promotion notifications was reportedly attributed to the final decision of PM Shehbaz on his arrival from the tour of Turkiye, Iran, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan.The process of promotions of these officers by the PM office was halted when Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan made a surprise entry and raised the issue of shortage of the senior field officers in both provinces.

They requested the federal government to help address the shortage of the officers under the Rotation Policy 2020 for ‘equal distribution of the officers’.Most of these officers recommended by the CSB for promotions are currently serving in major provinces of Punjab and Sindh against various field positions.

There were also reports that KP and Balochistan demanded services of some ‘officers of choice’ who were presently serving in Punjab and Sindh, keeping in view their experience and believed they had an ability to understand the dynamics of potential challenges of the smaller provinces.

According to the official source, Punjab and Sindh also raised objections to the proposal of reshuffling the officers under the rotation policy.They conveyed to Islamabad that the transfer of the senior officers may seriously affect their routine business/work, saying that a majority of them had been assigned key jobs to overcome crime and to complete many ongoing initiatives.

The reports suggested that the officers themselves were also least interested in their transfer to the smaller provinces and they were individually using their connection/influence in the power corridors to be retained in the large provinces.

The official went on to say that the PAS/PSP officers had no option other than to follow the rotation policy in letter and spirits being part of the federal services.

Another senior officer claimed that the Rotation Policy 2020 was being reviewed by the federal government and most of the officers, awaiting promotions, believed that making the final notifications conditional with the policy would not be a wise decision.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2025