ISLAMABAD: The incident of slapping polling staff by Syeda Waheeda Shah has now drawn attention of the Supreme Court to indecorous service conditions of civil servants.

As a result, the three-judge Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez sought parawise comments and suggestions from secretary of the Establishment Division as well as chief secretaries of the four provinces and the chief commissioner of ICT on ways of protecting fundamental rights of civil servants as enshrined under Article 9 (security of person) and Article 18 (freedom of trade, business or profession) of the Constitution.

The court had taken up the incident of PPP candidate Waheeda Shah slapping an assistant presiding officer at a polling station in Tando Mohammad Khan on a petition of Anita Turab, a DMG officer.

Waheeda Shah has since been declared disqualified for two years by the Election Commission of Pakistan.

On Monday, Anita Turab drew the attention of the court to the lack of job security for civil servants and cited a somewhat identical incident in Sargodha where a schoolteacher was beaten up by a member of the ruling party, but the DPO who tried to take action was transferred to Gilgit-Baltistan.

“It is our considered opinion the civil servants were bound to follow only lawful orders. It has been noticed that whenever officers/officials/civil servants follow lawful orders, they face resistance invariably and several times they are humiliated through transfers from one place to another or posting them as Officers on Special Duty or baseless proceedings of disciplinary nature are initiated against them,” the court said in its order.

Such transfer orders were issued even by the competent authorities concerned, disallowing civil servants to complete their tenure period, without adhering to rules and regulations, the order deplored.

Frequent transfers, postings and suspensions take place in different departments contrary to the law, rule and regulations, the court noted.

Referring to a recent incident in which the schoolteacher was tortured in Sialkot, the court deplored that both legs of the teacher had been fractured because of physical torture and ordered the Punjab Inspector General of Police to personally look into the matter and submit a report in this regard. The IG will also inform whether the DPO Sargodha had been transferred outside the province for his initiative to take action.

The report must reach the Supreme Court before March 28 when the case will be resumed.

During proceedings, Deputy Attorney General Dil Muhammad Alizai submitted a report compiled by the ECP on the Waheeda Shah case.

A police report was also submitted stating that the disqualified candidate had been charged with the offence under the Representation of the People Act, 1976, and the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

Mirpur Khas Deputy Inspector General of Police Ghulam Haider Jamali informed the court that disciplinary action had been initiated against the SDPO and others who were allegedly present inside the polling station at the time of the slapping incident.

But the DIG failed to give a satisfactory answer when the court inquired about the status of SDPO Syed Irfan Ali Shah in whose presence the incident of beating of two lady teachers had taken place.

“The SDPO is an inspector, but due to shortage of officers has been posted as the SDPO,” he replied.

But Syed Mehmood Akhtar Naqvi, one of the petitioners, challenged the DIG’s statement and alleged that in Sindh a large number of police officers had been given shoulder promotions.

Recalling that in a separate case the Supreme Court had already held the trend of shoulder promotions as illegal, it was expected of the IG and the four chief secretaries to take action by demoting to original ranks all those given out-of-turn shoulder promotions.

In case there is shortage of officers relevant rules should be followed for promoting them to next higher grades purely on merit and in accordance with the law. This will encourage the merit policy and people deserving promotions under the law will get their rights.