HE Punjab Government`s Press Note is provocative and undignified. It accuses what it calls `the Karachi Press` of `causing misunderstanding` and also of `malice`. For our part we refuse to be dragged into a controversy of that sort. Almost all the newspapers of Karachi, despite other differences with them, have expressed more or less identical views on the inadequacy of the action taken by the Punjab Government and on the desirability of the Centre taking the matter in its own hands. By suggesting that this was a deliberate attempt on the part of `the Karachi Press` to `cause misunderstanding regarding the action of the Punjab Government,` the draftsman of the Press Note has only exposed his own superiors to ridicule.

The Press Note says nothing new that was not already known to the public. It is a lame apologia which harps on the same arguments that have been already dealt with by public commentators. A few questions may be asked. First, is it not true that when the Central Government consulted the two Provincial Governments concerned as to what should be done with the Report of the Commission, the NWFP Government expressed itself in favour of publishing the Report, while the Punjab Government was in favour of suppressing passages which contained strictures on the Punjab Police? Second, is it not true that it was the Centre which eventually impressed upon the Punjab Government the undesirability of suppressing any portions of the Report? Add to this the Punjab`s attempt to justify the shooting of Said Akbar by Sub-Inspector Mohammad Shah, and further attempt to persuade the Commission to accept the theory that the assassin was motivated by religious fanaticism, and you have the reasons for public scepticism in a nutshell.

We indeed feel sorry for the Chief Minister, Mr Mumtaz Daultana, who, it seems to us, is being singularly ill-served by his sub-ordinates and ill-advised by his advisers.•