PESHAWAR, April 11: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday issued bailable warrants for the arrest of the interior secretary and two other officials of his ministry over failure to show up in a case about redeployment of Frontier Constabulary (FC) platoons to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from other provinces.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Mussarat Hilali also directed the accountant general Pakistan (revenue) to attach salary of the three – Secretary Khawaja Mohammad Siddique, Senior joint Secretary Akhtar Jan Wazir and Section Officer Rana Irfanul Haq – until further orders.

It later fixed the next hearing for April 18, observing that redeployment of FC platoons in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was of immense importance, especially for the May 11 general elections, and if the federal government failed to return those platoons, it would be difficult to conduct free elections due to the delicate law and order situation.

The bench issued directions for the dispatch of a copy of its order to the chief election commissioner, observing the CEC should know that the law and order situation in the province could worsen due to non-deployment of FC platoons.

During previous hearing on April 4, the bench had initiated contempt of court proceedings against the three officials for non-implementation of its order for redeployment of several FC platoons to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from other parts of the country and had directed that they should appear in person.

When the bench took up for hearing the case on Thursday, a standing counsel of the federal government said he had received a fax message from the interior ministry through which they were informed that an appeal had been filed with the Supreme Court against the order of the high court.

He added that the interior ministry felt that the dispute was between the federal and provincial governments and therefore, the high court was not competent to hear it and that only the Supreme Court had the jurisdiction to do so.

The bench expressed annoyance over the attitude of the interior ministry officials and observed that they had never raised the objection and that in November 2012, they had given undertaking that the FC platoons would be redeployed within two months.The chief justice observed that the attitude of the interior ministry officials showed that they considered themselves above the law.

The bench observed that even if an appeal was filed before the Supreme Court, the officials should have appeared before the high court as the apex court had so far not suspended the proceedings before it (bench).

On Nov 6, 2012, the high court had disposed of a writ petition filed by the provincial government through the home secretary and in light of an undertaking given by an official of the interior ministry, the court had ordered redeployment of FC platoons within two months.

The said order was subsequently followed by several orders issued on Jan 10, Jan 31, Feb 19 and March 13.

A high-level meeting was also held on Oct 22, 2012 in Islamabad with the interior secretary in chair and the additional secretary of the interior ministry, FC commandant and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa home secretary in attendance.

In that meeting, it was agreed that the current law and order situation in the province required enhancement of deployment of FC to strengthen the provincial government.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, in its petition, had claimed that currently, 294 FC platoons were operating outside the province though the force was basically meant to protect the areas bordering Fata.

It had requested the immediate redeployment of around 180 FC platoons to the province.