LAHORE, May 12: The Punjab chief secretary has finally fixed June 30 as deadline for the completion of the consequential legislation the ratio of which is below than 50 per cent at present.

The consequential legislation was a major task which the provincial governments were required to accomplish as soon as possible to synchronize their laws with the local government ordinance under which the district governments were launched on Aug 14, last year.

The district governments (or the devolution plan) were designed by the National Reconstruction Bureau and launched against the advice of many quarters which wanted it to also simultaneously tune in scores of other laws, sources said here on Sunday.

Their warning was that launching the devolution plan without amending laws governing the provincial governments would create a chasm in the administration system, rendering the district governments unable to function as was desired by their designers, they said.

Under the pre-devolution plan system, the office of deputy commissioner used to be considered the face of the government, having all administrative powers to implement official policy. But, as the office was abolished along with the executive magistracy at the time of the introduction of the new local government system, the powers of the deputy commissioner/district magistrate were divided between the district and sessions judge, district Nazim and the chief secretary of his administration’s team, the DCO.

And as this was done without amending the law, problems like who would order the constitution of a medical board or disinterment of a body for postmortem or who would issue or cancel the declaration of a newspaper or journal erupted, the sources said.

According to the sources in the provincial law and local government and rural development departments, from Aug 14, 2002, to todate 60 to 65 ordinances regarding various departments had been promulgated.

The number of these ordinances was 45 in early March and the officials had put the ratio to only 30 per cent of the total required consequential legislation. The sources said the chief secretary had earlier asked all departments to finish the legislation as early as possible but still around 12 departments “are sleeping.”

They said major changes were required to be made in the laws relating to the Board of Revenue like the amendments to the Land Revenue Act and the Tenancy Act but these had been brought about.

Similarly legislation relating to the home department had also been completed. But there were still departments which had not initiated even a single law for the required change.

The officials did not disclose the names of these departments but said they had been asked by the chief secretary to finish their job at any cost by June 30 so that the Punjab could be able to take the load of steps regarding the devolution of power from the federal government to the provincial governments and prepare for the general elections.

When asked about the status of the ordinances which had already been promulgated, they said they were still being adjusted in view of the problems pointed out by the quarters concerned regarding their applicability.

The Gujranwala DCO had recently demanded adjustments in the Motor Vehicles Acquisition Law because of the on ground problems, they said.