LAHORE: The Punjab Enforcement and Regulatory Authority (PERA) has issued an important advisory concerning the procedure for the sealing and de-sealing of premises, restricting the discretion of field officers.
PERA Headquarters has issued directions to all Assistant Commissioners and Sub-Divisional Enforcement Officers that sealing and de-sealing action must be carried out only in accordance with legal requirements and PERA’s digital workflow.
According to the notification, no SDEO of PERA shall de-seal any premises without the approval of the Assistant Commissioner. Any deviation from the procedure will be considered unlawful.
According to PERA officials, legal action will be taken against any officer who de-seals premises contrary to the law. The notification clarifies that all stages of sealing and de-sealing must be completed under the prescribed legal procedure.
The authority to seal a commercial premises is among the most consequential enforcement powers exercised at the sub-divisional level. Sealing halts business operations immediately, cutting off revenue for the occupant until the premises is restored to use. That asymmetry — where a single administrative act can impose substantial daily financial loss, and a second act can lift it — creates an environment in which the integrity of the process is critical.
De-sealing is the point of greatest vulnerability in the sequence. Where an officer can independently restore a sealed premises to operation, the sealing power itself becomes a lever. By routing every de-sealing decision through the Assistant Commissioner, the authority introduces a second signature into the chain, ensuring that no individual officer can both impose and remove the restriction.
The requirement that action be recorded through PERA’s digital workflow addresses the record-keeping dimension of the same problem. A digital trail timestamps each stage, identifies the officer responsible, and makes retrospective reconstruction of a case possible in a way that paper files maintained at sub-divisional offices historically did not.
The Punjab Enforcement and Regulatory Authority was established by the provincial government to consolidate regulatory enforcement functions that had previously been distributed across multiple departments and district administrations. Its mandate covers enforcement against encroachments, price control violations, unauthorised construction and other regulatory breaches, with Sub-Divisional Enforcement Officers operating as its principal field cadre alongside the district administration.
Bringing enforcement functions under a single authority was intended to reduce overlap, standardise procedure and create accountability at a provincial level. The present advisory is consistent with that design objective, tightening internal controls at the point where enforcement discretion is exercised on the ground.
The notification has been issued to all Assistant Commissioners, SDEOs, Deputy Commissioners and District Enforcement and Regulatory Boards. The inclusion of DERBs in the distribution list places the instruction before the district-level oversight bodies as well as the officers directly bound by it, establishing a supervisory layer that can monitor compliance.
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