Our magistracy

Our system of district administration is not a product of the colonial era but rather had evolved a long time ago, when the idea of the city state first shaped up in the Subcontinent. The magistracy is the chief of this system, however, from a legal point of view, currently there is no magistracy in district administration. When the judiciary was fully separated from the executive in 1977 through the Law Reforms Act, the task left for a magistrate was to enforce some 800 local and special laws.Nevertheless, in 2001 the executive magistracy was abolished and magistrates or commissioners were replaced by coordinating officers, whose task was now merely to coordinate between different offices in their respective districts. This hindered the enforcement of those 800 local and special laws and created legal obstacles for the public on local issues. Even so, in 2011 the office of the magistrate was brought back, but still the magistrate has not yet got the legal authority of imposing local and special laws. The government recently passed a bill in the National Assembly trying to restore the executive magistracy but since then there has been no development on this matter. The government should quickly carry out the legal process for re-establishing the executive magistracy so that our system of district administration is stabilised.Ahmad KhanPeshawar

from The News International - Newspost http://bit.ly/2VkJPhx