IPC-CCI permanent secretariat location finalised

New office to be set up by June this year, says federal secretary

ISLAMABAD: The authorities concerned have decided to establish a permanent secretariat for the Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) and the Council of Common Interests (CCI) to promote contact between the provinces and expedite resolution of disputes at the premises of Pakistan Secretariat.

The new office will allow preparation and finalisation of recommendations put forth by the provinces and the CCI.

According to Article 154(3) of the Constitution, the IPC ministry, during a CCI meeting held on July 23, 2013, was advised to prepare a summary pertaining to the establishment of a permanent CCI secretariat in Islamabad, including its budget and procedure for appointment of staff. The measure was proposed to address and resolve any reservations held by the provinces.

An important meeting to discuss establishment of the permanent secretariat for CCI was also held on January 4. According to the ministry’s federal secretary Akbar Durrani, the cabinet block office, currently situated on the second and third floors of the ministry office, does not offer enough space to run the affairs properly.

The authorities concerned carried out a survey of the new secretariat building of the federal secretariat to assess its suitability to host a permanent secretariat for the CCI, Durrani said, and added that recommendations based on the survey will soon be made. “After that, the secretariat office for the ministry and CCI will be set up in the new place by June this year,” he is quoted as saying.

Before that, the longstanding issue was last referred to the IPC house committee by Senate Deputy Chairman Saleem Mandviwalla during the sitting of the upper house of parliament on December 19 last year.

It was referred following a calling attention notice of Pakistan Peoples Party Senator Raza Rabbani, who during his time as chairman of the Senate, had given a ruling on the matter asking the government to immediately set up the secretariat in line with the Constitution.

However, he did not get a response from the government due to the absence of Federal Minister for IPC Dr Fehmida Mirza, who was unable to attend the session due to medical reasons.

Irked by the minister’s absence, Rabbani had regretted the failure of successive governments in setting up the CCI secretariat and had termed it an attempt to “sabotage and circumvent” the Constitution. He had alleged that though the Prime Minister Office had been supporting the idea, the Ministry of Finance had been creating hurdles in the way of establishment of the CCI secretariat.

In one of the meetings of the standing committee on IPC during the previous government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in 2016, the then minister for IPC Riaz Hussain Pirzada had reportedly stated that despite a ruling of the then Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani and a court order, he did not know why the government was reluctant to set up a permanent secretariat of the CCI.

The government is bound, by Article 154(3) of the Constitution, to set up a permanent secretariat of the CCI with equal representation from all provinces.

According to an IPC working paper, the cabinet had decided in principle to establish a permanent CCI secretariat by Dec 15, 2016.