ISLAMABAD, Dec 3: Pakistan’s constitutional history is replete with deviations. Fortunately the latest one is likely to end on Thursday when Auditor General Tanvir Ali Agha is scheduled to rejoin his office after a visit abroad.
Article 168 (6) of the 1973 Constitution requires that at no time the office of auditor general can be left vacant, meaning that when the sitting auditor general is absent from the office for any reason, somebody must be acting in his place.
But this requirement is being violated since October 2001 when former president Gen Pervez Musharraf allowed the then auditor general Manzur Hussain to make some internal arrangement instead of nominating an acting auditor general to look after his duties in his absence.
Gen Musharraf allowed the circumvention of the constitution after acting auditor general Munir Ghazi transferred a number of officers in the department during month-long absence of Mr Hussain from the office.
That made Mr Hussain seek and acquire the special permission to ignore the constitutional requirement for appointing an acting auditor general in his absence.
Officials of the auditor general’s office were not willing to comment to Dawn on the anomaly but one of them did confide that the exception made for Mr Hussain became the rule for his successors.
The successors kept the option with them and never informed the government of the day about the constitutional requirement.
It is clearly mentioned in the constitution as modified on July 31, 2004 that only the president has the authority to direct someone to look after the office of the auditor general in case of the incumbent.
The present auditor general, Tanvir Ali Agha, was out of the country from November 27 to December 3 but did not take the pain of even making some “internal arrangements” to look after the office in his absence.
When asked, Mr Saleem, the personal secretary to Mr Agha, said: “I don’t know who is looking after the office in his absence. I have no instructions in this regard.”
Equally ignorant was his Public Relations Officer (PRO) Akhtar Hussain Niazi. He however insisted that the permission given in 2001 by the then chief executive of the country was still valid and there was no need for an acting auditor general.