After polls schedule: AJK govt wants police chief transferred

IGP Bashir Ahmad Memon obtains stay against the move

MUZAFFARABAD/ ISLAMABAD: The AJK government asked the federal government on Tuesday to transfer Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Bashir Ahmad Memon back to the Establishment Division. The IGP is learnt to have obtained a stay order against the move.

In a letter sent to Islamabad, AJK Prime Minister Chaudhry Abdul Majeed stated that IGP Memon had been refusing to follow the state government’s orders since his appointment.

According to him, the prolonged stay of a ‘non-professional police officer’ such as Memon would “dent the relationship between Muzaffarabad and Islamabad”.

“We don’t need the services of … a police officer who refuses the orders of the chief executive of the region,” reads the letter, a copy of which is available with The Express Tribune.

Memon was appointed AJK police chief by the Establishment Division on March 16, 2016.

“The prime minister and his cabinet aides wanted to victimise their political rivals but IGP Memon and other police officials refused to follow their directives. This is the reason the prime minister wants to send him back to Islamabad,” said the IGP’s lawyer Raja Muhammad Hanif Khan.

Justice Sardar Azhar Saleem Baber admitted the petition for regular hearing and restrained the government from withdrawing the notification.

The court said the AJK government unilaterally cannot issue notifications on a date to which the election schedule was announced and Section 92-AA of AJK Elections Laws became applicable that says after the announcement of election schedule, all issuances of the notification were unlawful.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2016.