KARACHI: Sindh government has prepared a new draft of a letter to be sent to the federal government after the interior ministry rejected summary of provincial government and gave a free hand to the Sindh Rangers in Karachi to continue their policing job under the Anti Terrorism Act 1997.
Sources said the draft letter on Rangers’ powers have been prepared with the assistance of legal experts under article 147 of 1973 Constitution.
It states that Sindh government had written letter to the Centre for regulating the powers of the paramilitary force and not for limiting them.
A meeting has been convened to finalize the draft and sign it. The province would move to court if the federal government refused to accept the draft letter, sources added.
The Interior Ministry on Tuesday gave a free hand to the Sindh Rangers in Karachi to continue their policing job under the Anti Terrorism Act 1997 without having been influenced by the Sindh Assembly resolution or provincial government’s executive order.
In its letter issued to the provincial government on Tuesday evening following high-level consultations, the Interior Ministry conveyed to the Sindh government that the powers conferred to the Rangers under the Anti Terrorism Act 1997 could not be abridged, customised or made conditional.
The interior ministry also notified the extension of the Rangers authority for 60 days as per the law and the Constitution.
However, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Tuesday said the federal government’s move to give powers to the Rangers was unconstitutional and amounts to transgressing its mandate and authority.
PPP Co-Chairman Asif Zardari’s spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar said that by rejecting the constitutional right of Sindh to limit the scope of the Rangers’ powers, the federal government had acted in sheer violation of the Constitution.
