Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has ordered a ban on the permanent assignment of police escorts to provincial cabinet members, advisers, special assistants and others without valid authorization, directing the provincial police chief to ensure immediate compliance. The decision marks one of the strongest moves yet by the Punjab government against the unchecked distribution of police escorts as a status symbol among the province’s political and official circles.
The instructions, issued by the CM Office on October 22, make it clear that no police escort may be permanently attached to cabinet members, members of the Punjab Assembly, government officers or private individuals unless proper authorization has been obtained. The Punjab Police have been ordered to withdraw all unauthorized escorts with immediate effect, which means standing deployments granted without clearance must now be rolled back across the province without exception.
The directive also prohibits unauthorized individuals from using flagstaffs or official flags on their vehicles, a long-standing symbol of VIP privilege on the province’s roads. By covering both police escorts and the display of official insignia, the order targets the visible trappings of VIP culture as well as the underlying diversion of police personnel to protocol duty, closing off the informal routes through which such privileges have traditionally been claimed.
The move strikes at a deeply entrenched protocol culture in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, where police personnel are routinely pulled away from ordinary policing to serve as escorts for politicians, officials and influential individuals. Critics have long argued that such deployments stretch an already burdened police force, leaving fewer officers available for crime prevention and public safety in a province home to more than 120 million people.
Successive governments in Pakistan have pledged to curb the misuse of police resources for VIP duty, and the issue has repeatedly surfaced in public debate without lasting change. By tying security cover to a formal authorization process rather than rank or influence, Maryam Nawaz is signaling that police escorts in Punjab will be granted on assessed need rather than treated as a perk of office, and that cabinet members will not be exempt from the new requirement.
Enforcement now rests with the Punjab Police, with the Provincial Police Officer (IGP) directed to make sure the order is implemented without delay and that no unauthorized escort remains attached to any official. The real test of the directive will come in the days ahead: how strictly the unauthorized escorts are withdrawn on the ground, and whether officials who believe they genuinely need protection seek fresh authorization through the proper channel instead of relying on old arrangements.
