LAHORE, Jan 15: The Punjab Auqaf Department has so far received no direction to implement the decisions announced by President Gen Pervez Musharraf to register the mosques and to regulate the deeni madaris.

Senior officials told Dawn here on Tuesday that they were not in a position to say anything about the role the department would be required to play for the implementation of the decisions in the province.

“We have not received any notification or order so far. When a policy is formulated and sent down to us for implementation, only then would we know what we are supposed to do in this regard,” an official said. He said it was difficult to say whether “the department would be issuing NOCs for the construction of mosques and setting up of seminaries.”

Before the establishment of district governments in the country, the officials said, the registrar of joint stock companies was responsible for registering new mosques and seminaries under the Societies Act. Since the establishment of the district governments, he said, these powers had been devolved to the districts. “Each district has now appointed an official for this purpose,” he added.

At present, the Auqaf Department controls only 394 mosques and the attached seminaries in the Punjab.