Supreme Court upset

The Supreme Court of Pakistan had to direct the federation on Tuesday to remove the Director-General FIA within three days, along with other officials appointed on contract, after its previous directions for the removal of contract officials was ignored. The court passed this order while hearing the Haj scam case, with the Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who heads the six-member bench, observing, “Appointments on contract are not allowed to be continued in terms of Section 14 of the Civil Servants Act, 1973, and the policy unless the conditions specified therein are met.” The reason for this is not solely the desire to end a practice which militates against good governance, but because the court has seen no progress on the Haj case while the DG continued in office. The DG is apparently crucial enough to the government for it to be ready to defy the Supreme Court for his sake. Such defiance would be nothing new for the government, which has defied court orders before. The government should not think that it is getting away with anything, because the court has also noticed this defiance, which was expressed by the bench in this case.Thus the government should realise that it cannot test the court’s patience for ever. Its insistence on retaining the services of the DG FIA even though he had retired after reaching retirement age can only worsen the already existing tension with the judiciary. It should not be assumed that the Supreme Court is in any way ignorant of the failure to comply with its orders. At the same time, the reason for this defiance, the desire to protect certain persons from the consequences of corruption, should not be lost sight of. It has been said that the FIA DG is supposed to be crucial in the Haj scam, in which the Prime Minister’s son, an MPA, Is supposed to be involved, as well as the Steel Mills privatisation, in which the daughter of a presidential crony is supposed to be involved – Nation