Masud saheb

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   38 .                                   Masud saheb

Through a strange coincidence , I was coordinating the exercise of the redesigning of civil awards in the Cabinet Division as the Deputy Secretary concerned . It would be interesting to learn how the application form  for civil awards was reduced from the original  four pages to a quarter of a page . I was asked by the Additional Secretary to have a look at the form .  I saw plenty of things irrelevant in so far as the Federal Government  was concerned  for eg. religion ( it does not occupy any place for awards ) or  clearance of the DCs . And lo and behold my amendments were approved by the Cabinet Secretary .

The Cabinet Secretary conveyed to the Additional Secretary and myself the dislike of President Zia to  the designs of civil awards  .  We asked the relevant agencies like the National College of the Arts , Lahore , Pakistan National Council of the Arts etc to furnish their designs by a given date . They did that . I discussed the designs with the Additional Secretary and dismissed them because they had no vision .

The Cabinet Secretary asked me to find out how the previous designs were made . Through my research , we found that those designs were prepared by an English firm M/s Spinks and Sons . The Cabinet Secretary wrote to the firm .  I coordinated his two visits .   Mr . Spinks came to Rawalpindi twice and had a series of meetings with the late President , the Cabinet Secretary , the Master of the Pakistan Mint  Syed Mahmood Shaukat  etc. The first was to make him understand the task in hand . The second was hand over the designs that his firm had made .

I ordered  M/s Ghazanfar Ali and Sons , Rawalpindi to prepare a special leather  bag for carrying the designs , for the presentation to the President . In the initial meeting held opposite the Murree Brewery and attended by the President , the Cabinet Secretary , the Mint Master  yours truly made the presentation   .   

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Later on the bag was meant to carry the medals from the Cabinet Division to the Aiwan e Sadr and back .

Regards

Mahfooz