Official language status: Contempt petition filed against government in SC

Petitioner says Centre, provinces failed to implement court order

ISLAMABAD: A contempt petition was filed on Tuesday against the non-implementation of the Supreme Court’s judgment regarding adoption of Urdu as the country’s official language.

Announcing judgment on a petition filed by Advocate Kokab Iqbal, the apex court’s three-judge bench headed by former chief justice Jawwad S Khawaja on September 8 ordered the centre and provinces to take measures for declaring Urdu as national language in view of Article 251 of the Constitution.

However, Iqbal on Tuesday filed another petition, which said that despite passage of three months since announcement of the landmark judgment, no practical steps were taken for adoption of Urdu.

The petitioner made Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid, PM’s Special Assistant on Law Barrister Zafarullah and PM’s Special Assistant on National Affairs Irfan Siddiqui as well as the secretary establishment and the cabinet as respondents.

He said the premier constituted a three-member committee for the implementation of the judgment; however the committee neither took the judgment seriously nor initiated steps for its implementation. “The committee has made plans on papers but taken no practical steps,” he said.

He said the president, prime minister and ministers were still making speeches in English despite the judgment. Iqbal said the official correspondence was still being conducted in English.

According the SC’s judgment, the statutory, regulatory and oversight bodies shall take steps to implement Article 251 of the Constitution without unnecessary delay. It ordered the federal and provincial governments to coordinate with each other for uniformity in Urdu’s script (rasmulkhat).

It also ordered that federal and provincial laws should be translated into the national languages within three months. It said the verdicts in cases relating to public interest litigation and judgments enunciating a principle of law in terms of Article 189 must be translated into Urdu.

“In court cases, government departments should make all reasonable efforts to submit their replies in Urdu to enable citizens to effectively enforce their legal rights. If, subsequent to this judgment, any public bodies or public officials continue to violate Article 251, citizens who suffer a tangible loss directly and foreseeably resulting from such violation shall be entitled to enforce any civil rights,” it said.

The judgment also ordered the federal and provincial secretaries to submit their compliance reports within three months. Last week the Supreme Court registrar also wrote letters to the governments reminding them to comply with the judgment.

It is to be noted that the Punjab government has already filed a review petition in the apex court against its September 8 judgment. Additional Advocate General Razzaq A Mirza filed review petition that requested that the SC should amend its judgment to translate all the available laws within three months.

The review petition said it is humanly and practically impossible to adhere to the time span of three months as suggested by the judgment.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th, 2015.