Standard Time (Interpretation of References) Ordinance, 1943

This very short 1943 Ordinance is a technical, wartime-era measure that governs how references to "Standard Time" in other laws should be interpreted whenever the government changes the official time offset from Greenwich Mean Time.

Section 2 is the sole substantive provision: while any Federal Government order is in force setting Standard Time at some offset from Greenwich Mean Time other than the traditional five and a half hours, any reference to "Standard Time" in any law in force in Pakistan must be read as referring to whatever offset the Federal Government has currently fixed by order -- even if that law's own text defines Standard Time as five and a half hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time.

In effect, this Ordinance lets the government temporarily shift the country's official clock (for example, during wartime for daylight-saving-style reasons) without having to amend every individual law that mentions "Standard Time."

This is a very old wartime ordinance (1943) whose original context (an "emergency") is historical, and its footnotes show extensive territorial-extension history and later repeal of the specific words "Indian" in "Standard Time" by a 1951 amendment, so it should be read as a narrow technical interpretation rule rather than a substantive time-zone-setting law itself.