Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif removed the deputy commissioner of Jhelum on Sunday after BISE Rawalpindi moved the district’s Computer Science papers by 20 days to clear the way for her visit. The papers, part of the Intermediate Second Annual Examinations 2026, were due on Tuesday, 10 November, and will now be held on Monday, 30 November.
What happened in Jhelum
The board rescheduled the papers on the recommendation of the Jhelum deputy commissioner, who had written to the BISE Rawalpindi chairman ahead of the chief minister’s expected visit to Jhelum and Pind Dadan Khan on 10 November. The letter said the district administration was making extensive administrative, security and protocol arrangements for the visit, and that the deployment made it unfeasible to ensure the smooth conduct of the examination.
The board accepted the request. The Computer Science papers for both the morning and evening groups will now be held on 30 November at the assigned centres, and the board will issue new roll number slips. Slips already issued will remain valid. The change applies only to Jhelum district; papers elsewhere under the Rawalpindi board will be held as scheduled.
Hours later, the chief minister removed Deputy Commissioner Mir Reza Ozgen with immediate effect. The Services and General Administration Department directed him to report for further orders. Maryam Nawaz said the postponement violated her own standing instruction. “Despite my explicit instructions that no inconvenience or disruption whatsoever should be caused to the public during my visits to the districts, such an incident has nevertheless occurred,” she said. “This is a clear disregard for my directions.”
Her office then reissued the instruction across the province. No market, shop or business establishment is to be closed during official visits, and the direction has gone to all regional police officers, district police officers, commissioners and deputy commissioners in Punjab.
The 20-day bill
The arithmetic is what makes this more than a transfer order. The papers move from 10 November to 30 November, a delay of 20 days, nearly three weeks. These are second annual examinations, the supplementary round for students retaking papers or improving grades, so the delay pushes their results back by the same 20 days.
That is the part the removal does not settle. As of Sunday, no publication has said whether the papers will go back to 10 November or stay on 30 November, and no successor has been named for Jhelum. If the date stays at 30 November, the students still lose the 20 days. The officer changed; the outcome for the students has not.
Two removals in fourteen days
Fourteen days earlier, the same pattern played out in Jhang. On 25 October, the chief minister removed Jhang Deputy Commissioner Babar Sahib Din after a video posted on 24 October showed a Punjab Enforcement and Regulatory Authority (PERA) vehicle travelling with luxury vehicles in the three-day Jhang Thal Jeep Rally, held from 16 to 18 October. The chief minister posted on X the next day that deploying a regulatory authority’s resources for non-serious purposes breached administrative discipline, and the Services and General Administration Department issued the transfer notification the same day.
In Jhang, a state vehicle was used for fun. In Jhelum, an examination was moved for a visit. What they share is the method: a public announcement, a same-day notification, and a named officer held responsible for a disruption the chief minister says she had already forbidden. The same administration has been setting its own record on delivery, from Punjab’s PIVOT training programme, which trained 402,060 people for 162,000 jobs, to a local polls date for February 2027 after eleven years without one.
The visit still goes ahead
There is a question the removal leaves open, and it sits in the deputy commissioner’s own letter. He wrote that the visit’s deployment made the examination unfeasible. The examination moved. The visit, scheduled for 10 November, did not. The roads will still close for it, the police will still deploy for it, and the administration will still be tied up with it. The only difference is that no examination will run alongside it.
That is the test the reissued instruction now has to pass. It is easy to forbid disruption in a circular. The harder question is whether a chief minister’s visit can be run without closing roads and diverting police, and whether the next district administration will believe the instruction or quietly move the examination again.
What to watch next
Three things will show whether this removal changed anything beyond the officer. First, does BISE restore the 10 November date, or do the papers stay on 30 November? Second, who is named the new Jhelum deputy commissioner? Third, at the next district visit, do the arrangements leave schools, markets and roads alone?
