A two-member bench of Peshawar High Court comprising Justice Ms. Musarrat Hilali and Justice Ijaz Anwar extended stay order against amendment made in Civil Services of Pakistan (CSP) rules due to lawyers strike in the provincial capital.
Advocate Umer Ijaz Gilani has filed a petition on behalf of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provincial Management Services (PMS) officer Farhat Ullah Marwat challenging vires of the amendments made to the Civil Service of Pakistan (Composition and cadre) Rules 1954. Earlier the court has suspended the amendment and fixed the matter for June 17.
Advocate Gilani has argued that the amendments was done against the provisions of the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan as well as the Civil Servants Act. The petitioner said the amendment has impacted the terms and conditions of service of the PMS officer, adding that he also called into question the authority of the federal government to make rules in connection with the affairs of the province under Article 240(b) of the constitution.
It is pertinent to mention that during the pendency of the writ petition the Establishment Division moved yet another amendment in the scheduled posts increasing the posts of PAS officer four folds in provinces and took almost all the top tier postings.
Advocates Ali Gohar Durrani and Umer Ijaz Gillani have appraised the court that the constitutional scheme has been robbed in the garb of an executive order without any sanctity attached to it.
The counsels contended that as PMS officer is a provincial government civil servant, he can challenge only the legality of actions of provincial government before KP Service tribunal and thus the amendment being federal cannot be called in question before the services tribunal. They further argued that as rule 17 provided for consultation with the Provincial Government and that consultation has not taken place therefore the amendment in rules must be suspended. Another issue was the conflict of the amendment with Rule 7 of the CSP rules 1954 as well as the KP PMS Rules 2007 Schedule III.
