The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has finally set the ball rolling towards a neutral bureaucracy by replacing top bureaucrats in two major provinces, Punjab and Sindh, while Punjab Chief Minister Najam Sethi will also be choosing his principal secretary, Pakistan Today has learnt.
The ECP reportedly directed the establishment division of the federal government to change chief secretaries of Punjab and Sindh. According to details, Punjab chief secretary Nasir Khosa has replaced Sindh chief secretary Raja Abbas, who has been transferred to the Establishment Division.
Meanwhile, Secretary Education and Training Major (R) Qamar Zaman has been selected for the Punjab’s most coveted bureaucratic slot.
The commission directed the establishment division to implement its orders and report to ECP within three days.
Zaman, who comes from Gujrat, is a grade-22 secretariat group officer and has held important slots in the past as well. According to his career profile, he left Punjab in 1999 as DG LDA when he was in Grade 19. He has also been commissioner of the Rawalpinid division. In the federal capital, he has held one of the most important and sensitive portfolios of the interior secretary in 2009.
Last year, Zaman was a part of a controversy when the Establishment Division gave him additional charge of the executive director of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), which was later taken from him on the Supreme Court orders.
The news of his appointment to the top slot spread in the bureaucratic circles immediately with necessary arrangements being taken for the shift.
However, Punjab Secretary Services Syed Mubashar Raza said the establishment division has yet to be notified of the posting and the move was still news to him.
“Usually the chief secretary is always posted after consultation of the province with the federal government, while this time around, the direction has come from the ECP,” he added.
A senior legal expert, however, said the ECP could direct the establishment division to replace the chief secretary of any province under the rules.
In Punjab, however, following the move, Sethi, who vowed to reshuffle Punjab bureaucracy within seven days, also selected Secretary Mines and Minerals Shahid Mehmood for another most coveted slot of the principal secretary to the chief minister. Sources, however, said that Mehmood, a grade20 officer, has been selected for such an important slot because he had never held a very important portfolio in Punjab and will have little political influence.
Former principal secretary Nadeem Hassan Asif has already been made vice chairman of the Punjab Board of Investment and Trade (PBIT). Moreover, DGPR Athar Ali Khan has been asked to report to his parent department while Lahore Transport Company (LTC) MD Amjad Hussain Bhatti has been posted as the DGPR.
