Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar spent a busy day on Thursday in Peshawar, taking suo motu notices, like in Karachi and Lahore before, of different public interest issues. He visited a leading public sector hospital and a private medical college where he found things wanting. Later, the CJ presided over a three-member bench of the Supreme Court, summoning Chief Minister Parvez Khattak and administrative heads of various departments to explain various shortcomings, expressing dissatisfaction over the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government's performance regarding education, healthcare, and drinking water, as well as a security matter. The KP Inspector General of Police informed the bench that about as many as 3,000 policemen had been deputed on security duty with different persons, and that 70 percent of them were not entitled under the rules, upon which the court directed police chiefs in all the four provinces to withdraw security from unauthorised persons by the next day.
It is a common spectacle in all the provinces for influential people to be accompanied by security details as a status symbol rather than real need for protection. But it is quite surprising that this should be going on under the PTI government in KP, which prides itself on pro-people policies of change. The IGP's statement shows the provincial authority has been disregarding the rules to cater to the whims of its friends and supporters. 70 percent of the 3,000 police are doing non-essential duty at the expense of their responsibilities for maintaining law and order for the common citizens. If it was a baggage inherited from its predecessor, the PTI government should have gotten rid of it by now.
Admittedly, KP has been facing the main brunt of terrorism located as it is right next to tribal areas earlier infested with the Taliban. That still does not justify provision of official security to selected individuals, first because terrorists have been indiscriminately attacking people. Second, following the military operations, security situation in the province has normalized to a large extent. Now that the issue regarding unauthorised individuals is being addressed on the apex court's intervention, provincial governments as well as the one at the Centre also need to revise the list of officially entitled persons. Those in sensitive positions, of course, should continue to be assigned security protection, but others, for example, education and health ministers, do not need it. It is about time all governments acted on their own to bring about improvement in social services and eschewed the so-called VIP culture, creating conditions wherein the Supreme Court does not have to take suo motu notices.
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