PESHAWAR: Though denied by the government, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister is understood to have approved the `controversial` amendments to the relevant law around nine months ago for f acilitating the current provincial ombudsman to be considered for the coveted post of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ehtesab Commission`s director general.

On Wednesday, public health engineering minister Shah Farman had claimed in a news conference that the provincial government wasn`t making any amendment to the KP Provincial Ombudsman Act 2010 to benefit one of the candidates. However, a law department`s summary carrying the signatures of CM Pervez Khattak and law minister Imtiaz Shahid gives the lie to the assertion.

Official sources told Dawn that the controversial bill was submitted to the assembly bypassing the provincial cabinet, a violation of the Supreme Court judgment delivere d last year.

They claimed that even in the March 29 provincial cabinet meeting, the CM reportedly expressed ignorance about the proposed law when certain members raised the issue.

According to the of ficial documents, the CM had given approval in June 2016 to the summary for introducing a bill in the pro-vincial assembly for making amendments to the KP Provincial Ombudsman Act, 2010.

After the governor gave assent to the said bill on the advice of the chief minister, the bill titled KP Provincial Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill, 2016, was submitted to the assembly`s secretariat in June 2016.

The post of KPEC`s director general had fallen vacant in February last year after the then incumbent, retired Lt-Gen H amid Khan, had resigned over differences on certain amendments made to the KPEC Act.

Under the law, the search and scrutiny committee has to recommend a candidate to the legislative committee for approval following which the Ehtesab commission has to appoint the finally selected candidate as the DG.

Recently, the search and scrutiny committee constituted under the KPEC Act 2014 shortlisted three names for the coveted post of the KPEC DG, including that of provincial ombudsman Waqar Ayub, who, under the existing law, is not qualified to be considered for the said post.

Under the existing law, the ombudsman is not qualified to hold any office of profit before the expiry of two years of him ceasing to hold the of fice of the ombudsman.

Through the controversial amendment, the government has proposed to exempt a judicial or quasi-judicial office from that bar.

To give retrospective effect of the proposed amendment another member of the provincial assembly, Munawar Khan, belonging to the JUI-F, has also proposed an amendment.

The candidate, Waqar Ayub, has claimed that the post of the DG falls in that cate-gory and therefore, after the said amendment in near future he would be qualified for the post.

In a letter sent to the search committee on Mar 21, the candidate has cited the said proposed amendment and said it was likely to be approved post-dated in the upcoming assembly session likely to commence towards the end of this week.

Sub-clause 2 of the Section 5 of the KP Provincial Ombudsman Act, 2010, provides: `The Provincial Ombudsman, shall not hold any office of profit in the Service of Pakistan or the Province before the expir ation of two years af ter he has ceased to hold that office nor shall he be eligible during the tenure of office and for a period of two years thereafter for election as a member of Parliament or a Provincial Assembly or any local body or take part in any political activity.

Interestingly, the search committee shortlisted the ombudsman despite the bar mentioned in the law.

When contacted, the chairman of the search committee, Abbass Khan, denied that there was any external pressure on them for short-listing the name of Waqar Ayub or the other two candidates.

`We might have overlooked certain legal points, which could be rectified in future as there are several safety mechanisms available in the law,` he said.

Mr Abbass Khan said the decision was taken by them in their meeting on Sunday last and that the three names would be put to public scrutiny for 15 days during which the general public could point out objections against a particular candidate.

He said the most interesting aspect of the issue was that the initiative for amending the law was also taken by the ombudsman of fice last year.`The office of the Provincial Ombudsman has proposed certain amendments in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial Ombudsman Act, 2010, (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Act No. XIV of 2010), for effective and improved performance and ef ficiency and for removing hurdles in the implementation of the aforesaid Act, stated the summary prepared by the law department.

`The proposal of the Provincial Ombudsman has been thoroughly examined in Law Department and accordingly a draftbillhas been prepared and afair vetted copy is placed at Annex: II.

In the bill along with certain other amendments, the controversial amendment has been neatly camouflaged.

Section 5 of the Bill provides that the words `except a judicial or quasi-judicial of fice` shall be inserted in section 5 of the Act.

A legal expert said a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Mian Saqib Nisar (now Chief Justice of Pakistan) had ruled last year in several identical petitions that the federal government was the collective entity described as the cabinet constituting the prime minister and federal minister.

He added that the same condition applied to a province and a provincialgovernment was an entity described as provincial cabinet including chief minister and provincial ministers.

The expert said the draft law was approved by the chief minister bypassing the cabinet perhaps to avoid any debate by its members.

Minister Shah Farman was not available for comments on the matter though Dawn made repeated calls on and sent text messages to his cellphone number.