Several petitions relating to the political situation in Islamabad were heard by Lahore High Court last week.
Justice Mansoor Ali Shah dismissed a petition seeking directions to restrain the chief of army staff from engaging in political issues, particularly playing arbitrator in the stalemate in Islamabad.
Lawyer’s Movement for Protection of the Constitution had filed a petition through advocate Abdul Basit.
The petitioner’s counsel said the Supreme Court in its July 31, 2009 order had already ruled that the army had no role in politics under the Constitution.
Disqualification of the prime minister
LHC also dismissed a petition seeking disqualification of the prime minister and certain members of his cabinet.
A writ petition was filed in the court seeking disqualification of Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif and Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ahmed for allegedly lying to the nation about intervention by the chief of army staff to end the deadlock at in D-Chowk.
Petitioner Gohar Nawaz Sindhu, senior vice president of Insaf Lawyers Forum, told the court that the prime minister had asked the chief of army staff to intervene but told the parliament that he had not asked him to mediate the crisis.
On September 2, the court dismissed the petition for being non-maintainable.
Justice Mansoor Ali Shah ruled that the statement made by the prime minister on the floor of the National Assembly and a press release issued by the ISPR disputed the petitioner’s claim.
Section for treason
On September 4, Justice Mehmood Maqbool Bajwa of the Lahore High Court sustaining an objection of the registrar’s office dismissed a petition seeking constitution of a five member bench to try the 21 people nominated in the FIR for the June 17 Model Town killings.
Petitioner Barrister Javed Iqbal Jafri sought an order for the addition of treason in Model Town FIR according to the Section 6 of the Constitution.
He said he feared that a single-member bench at district court’s level might be influenced.
He said Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act had not been added to the FIR as requested by Pakistan Awami Tehreek.
PAT seeks recovery of workers
Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) moved the court on September 4 against alleged illegal detention of party 72 workers in the Punjab.
Advocate Ishtiaq Chaudhry filed a petition on behalf of the PAT and said that the provincial government had been victimising its workers on political grounds.
He said the government had detained at least 72 workers of the party and was not producing them before a court.
The lawyer asked the court to set aside detention orders, if any, issued by the government against the PAT workers.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 8th, 2014.
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