LAHORE, June 21: Punjab police authorities intend to ‘strongly’ oppose amendments proposed by the provincial home department in the draft bill of the Police Order 2012 in a cabinet meeting on Friday (today) with the chief minister in the chair, Dawn has learnt.

Believing that any amendment to the police order, if approved and vet by the law department and passed by the assembly, will be a clear-cut violation of federal laws as any amendment required by the provincial government needs the prime minister’s approval in the light of Articles 142 and 143 of the Constitution, Inspector General of Police Mohammad Habibur Rehman held an emergency meeting with his subordinates to finalize a strategy to counter the draft in the cabinet meeting, sources said.

However, the provincial bureaucracy, who proposed 66 amendments to the draft bill of the Police Order 2012, is of the view that under the Constitution the law and order is now the provincial subject and, therefore, provinces are authorized to make or amend laws about police.

Sources said after the chief secretary decided to fully back the amendments, police authorities too showed more vigor to oppose the draft law with an objection that police were not taken onboard.

The IG, in an official correspondence with the home secretary on June 18, a copy of which is available with Dawn, stated: “At the very outset of June 11 meeting on the subject, we expressed the need of a thorough internal review of the proposed amendments to the police order by the Punjab police.

It was stressed in the meeting that the proposed amendments are not to altogether change the inherent character and spirit of the original Police Order 2002.

Whereas a comprehensive internal review of proposed amendments by the Punjab police is already under way, the police want to present its input/viewpoint on the draft prepared by the home department.

A) As regards Punjab Assembly’s mandate to amend the police order, it is outside its purview in view of the fact that both the Police Order 2002 as well as its precursor Police Act 1861 was a statute enacted by the central government. Although the constitutional principle of having a concurrent list ceased to exist following the 18th Amendment, the application of this principle has been especially preserved in relation to legislative subjects of Criminal Law, Procedure and Evidence of which the Police Order 2002 is an integral part (Articles 142 and 143).

B) In addition to the above-referred constitutional constraints which limit the scope of amendments to the police order by a provincial assembly, it is our considered opinion that an exercise in Punjab to amend or delete a huge number of articles of the police order will result in compromising the federal texture of police order which visualized uniform application of the same police law across all provinces.

C) As to the reinsertion of former provisions, especially under Article 2(vii-a) and (xxvi-a), relating to definitions of ‘Ex-Officio Secretary’ and ‘Superintendence’, it appears to be unnecessarily incorporated in the draft upon which we have already conveyed our concerns in a note to the chief minister a few months ago.The IG suggested that only those amendments should be submitted for the consideration of the Punjab Assembly whose need had been identified by the Punjab police i.e. amendments to provisions on investigation (Article 18), posting of SI as SHO (Article 21), direct recruitment to the provincial police in the rank of SI (Article 7) and the deletion of articles 155, 156 and 157.

However, the proposed amendments should be referred to the PA after seeking the prior approval of the federal government as required under Article 184 of the Police Order 2002.

The IG also proposed the Police Commissionerate System rather than going back to the colonial concept of policing.

A senior Punjab police officer, who is associated with the development, told this reporter that Sindh and Balochistan governments had repealed the Police Order 2002 and replaced it with old-fashioned Police Act 1861, but higher courts had already reverted and declared it null and void by ruling that the police law was a federal subject and provinces couldn’t deal with it.

He said the Balochistan government had even restored the office of the district magistrate (executive magistracy), but the high court of the province had too declared the step null and void.

The officer said the countries throughout the world were transforming the police department by introducing the commissionerate system and making police independent, but in Pakistan the bureaucracy wanted to grab more powers by regaining administrative control over police.

Another officer was of the view that the recent tug-of-war to capture powers between bureaucracy and police is evident of the fact that the public service and better administrative matters are not their objective.

He questioned if the law and order situation improved in Sindh and Balochistan after replacing the Police Order 2002 with the old police act.