Revival in progress: Efforts to restore magistracy system set in motion

By Qamar ZamanPublished: January 4, 2013

ISLAMABAD: With full consensus among stakeholders, the Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) committee on Thursday set a deadline for the law ministry to complete the homework for restoration of an executive magistracy system.
“The law minister is directed to complete the process by the 15th of this month,” said Minister for IPC Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani while chairing the meeting.
The IPC was convened after about two years as the last meeting was held in February 2011 and Bijarani underlined the need for holding regular meetings in order to address the grievances of the provinces.
The system of district magistrates (DM) and sub-district magistrates (SDM) having executive powers was abolished by the former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf in 2001 under the local bodies reform process.
However, the national price monitoring committee, comprising federal and provincial finance secretaries and chief secretaries, had demanded restoration of the system in order to rein in increase in prices of essential commodities.
The executive magistracy system empowers the provinces to take action against hoarders.
On Wednesday, chief secretaries from all four provinces voted for the system’s restoration, agreed on a proposed draft and held that Section 143 of CrPC should be amended with the consent of the provinces. The interior ministry has forwarded the bill to the law and justice division for vetting.
Balochistan’s chief secretary informed the committee that though the provincial government had introduced legislation on the subject the Balochistan High Court (BHC) had overturned the same.
The meeting decided to work out a new draft for restoration of an executive magistracy while keeping in view the ruling of BHC.

Legal dope
Meanwhile, the supply of opium, seized by Law Enforcing Agencies (LEA) to the government’s Alkaloid Opium Factory, Lahore came under discussion.
Punjab Chief Secretary Nasir Mehmood Khosa informed the meeting that there was only one pharmaceutical firm in the country which was using opium in medicines.
He said that the new customs regulation bans the supply of opium and it provides for burning of the seized contraband.
He said that the FBR should have amended the regulation and that some amount of opium should have been supplied to the Punjab government so that it could keep manufacturing the medicine for drug addicts. The FBR chairman agreed with the proposal.
IPC changes composition
The committee also decided to change its composition by replacing provincial chief ministers with inter-provincial ministers. Information Minister Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Mian Iftikhar Hussain had proposed the change in composition.
“It is not possible for the chief ministers to attend every single meeting due their engagements and there is no point that they send their representatives all the time,” he added.
The participants of the meeting also discussed the implementation of Industrial Regulation Ordinance, 2011.
Punjab’s labour secretary presented the case and said that after the 18th Amendment, the subject rested with the provinces and that the federation could not legislate on the subject.
The head of the committee Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, also a federal minister, then decided to refer the issue to the Council of Common Interests (CCI).


Published in The Express Tribune, January 4th, 2013.