Commissioners: Civil society goes to court over new system

Three citizens of Karachi argue that the commissionerate system violates Article 140 of the Constitution of Pakistan.

KARACHI:

Three prominent citizens of Karachi moved the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Saturday against four ordinances promulgated by the acting governor.

Filing the petition through Muqeem Alam advocate, journalist Ajmal Dehlvi, former minister Barrister Habib-ur Rahman, and prominent businessman Arshad Vohra, maintained that the recent steps taken by the provincial government to wrap up the local bodies system and the police ordinance were violative of Article 140 of the Constitution of Pakistan.

Article 140 provides for a devolution of powers to the lowest strata ie union councils, the petitioner maintain, adding that the commissionerate system would harm the interests of the general public.

They maintained that conferring magisterial powers to sub-divisional magistrates would go against the judgment of the Supreme Court in the famous “Sharaf Faridi case”. The above cited case made it mandatory for the federal government to separate the executive from the judiciary, the petitioners said.

They prayed the court to declare the impugned ordinances as ultra vires of the constitution. Through an application, they also sought a restraining order to bar the government from implementing and enforcing the impugned ordinances.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2011.