SC rejects Sindh’s plea to restrain AD Khawaja

Bar govt from removing IGP till case is decided; Sindh challenges SHC decision allowing Khawaja to continue in role

ISLAMABAD: The top court has rejected the Sindh Government’s plea to restrain Allah Dino Khawaja from continuing as the inspector general of the Sindh Police.

A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar, has granted leave of Sindh government’s petition challenging the Sindh High Court’s September 7 order to permit Allah Dino Khawaja to continue as Sindh IG. The petition was filed by senior lawyer and former PPP law minister Farooq Naek.

The bench also allowed AD Khawaja to continue ordering transfers and postings of police officials. It observed that even the federal government cannot remove the Sindh IG till the final decision of the court. The chief justice appreciated the SHC’s order, wherein it permitted Khawaja to continue at his post.

Naek has requested that the court set an early date for hearing. Upon this, the CJP suggested that Naek formally move an application for early hearing.

Earlier, the Sindh government contended that the provincial government was facing severe hardships in performing its constitutional obligation of maintaining law and order. Unless the instant petition was allowed, public interest would be seriously prejudiced and the authority and autonomy of the provincial government would be undermined, it added.



The petition also contended that the SHC verdict suffered from a grave error of law in as much as the directions were also contrary to the fundamental and well-settled principles of parliamentary sovereignty.

“Legislative bodies cannot be prevented or restrained from performing their constitutional obligations and carrying out their mandate as exclusively conferred upon them,” stated the petition.

It was submitted that preventing the provincial government from making an amendment or alternation in the Rules of Business, 1986, constituted a permanent injunction against a legislative body with respect to policy matters within its exclusive competence and prevention from amending or reducing the tenure from less than three years travelled well beyond the scope of judicial functions and amounted to legislation, which is legally unsustainable.



“The determination of three years tenure for the IGP to be immutable by the province is tantamount to writing into the Constitution, which is blatantly illegal, unlawful and outside the jurisdiction of the division bench of the High Court of Sindh,” the petition said.

It was further submitted that entrenchment of three-year tenure was never contemplated by the Constitution, federal or provincial legislature, as such, the entrenchment was illegal, unconstitutional, and blatantly without jurisdiction.

The petitioner wondered how the division bench had reached a conclusion that a bare minimum tenure of “three years” was to be guaranteed as an inviolable obligation and could never be reduced, as no valid reasoning had been given for the same, nor was there a constitutional provision which encapsulated this.

It was further submitted that the federal government’s interference in respect of appointment and removal of the IGP violated the basic structure of the Constitution, which guaranteed provincial autonomy.

“The impugned judgment has thus significantly eroded and impaired the executive authority of the provincial government. Accordingly, the impugned judgment is unsustainable in the eyes of the law and therefore liable to be set aside,” Naek’s petition reads.

Soon after the Centre appointed AD Khawaja in 2016, the Sindh government has been running from pillar-to-post for his removal.