The Punjab Board of Administration

Governing after annexation

After annexing Punjab in 1849, the East India Company governed the province through a three-member Board of Administration. Its responsibilities included political and military matters, revenue and land settlement, and justice. In 1853 a chief commissioner replaced the Board. Historian Preet Aulakh places these arrangements between the earlier Lahore residency and the later commissioner system.[3]

Combined powers

Archie Blissett traces the Board’s activation to a despatch of 31 March 1849, addressed to Henry Lawrence, John Lawrence and Charles Mansel. Henry was its prospective president. The instruction reached the historian through Tupper’s published selection of government records.[1]

The arrangement raised a question about how officials should exercise authority. Blissett reads Nicholson’s letter of 2 April 1849 as evidence of hostility to rigid legal procedure and support for combining executive and judicial power. Nicholson feared that precedent could defeat substantive judgment. The historian distinguishes military officers’ wish for discretionary criminal jurisdiction from John Lawrence’s stronger interest in simplifying civil administration. This was disagreement within the administration, rather than a single settled doctrine shared equally by everyone associated with the Board.[1]

Departmental responsibilities

The official report for 1851–53 describes a different distribution of responsibilities after the Board. A chief commissioner communicated directly with the supreme government and headed civil and political administration. Beneath him, the judicial commissioner combined appellate work with police supervision and responsibilities for roads, municipal funds and education. The financial commissioner handled revenue collection and settlement, landed-property questions and financial returns. Judicial and financial functions therefore did not map neatly onto courts and accounts alone. The financial commissioner’s miscellaneous duties included supervision of the population census and trade statistics, extending his remit beyond revenue. The report praises separate departmental responsibility under one head as an improvement over joint control. That assessment belongs to the administration describing its own reorganisation; it does not independently measure the experience of people governed by these officers.[2]

A dating discrepancy

The report places abolition in February 1853. Blissett’s conclusion gives January. Their accounts thus retain a disagreement about the month; the selected evidence does not settle a precise day.[2][1]