"Since the high court had passed the verdict on 17 different constitutional petitions, the government would be challenging the order separately," Provincial advocate-general Khalid Javed Khan.
KARACHI: The Supreme Court (SC) fixed January 8 as the date for the hearing of the Sindh government’s appeal against the Sindh High Court (SHC) judgement on of the delimitation process in the province.
Sources told The Express Tribune that the appeals would be taken up by a three-member bench, which will be headed by chief justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, at the apex court’s principal seat in Islamabad.
Sindh government filed another seven appeals in the SC on Monday, challenging the SHC’s ruling that declared the delimitation process in the province as illegal under the Sindh Local Government Act (SLGA) 2013.
“A total of 17 appeals will be filed individually in respect to each district from where the political parties or the individuals had challenged the delimitation process in the high court,” provincial advocate-general Khalid Javed Khan told The Express Tribune.
On Saturday, the government had approached the apex court seeking a grant of leave to appeal against the SHC’s December 30 2013 judgment that had declared the “entire process of delimitation in the province under SLGA as illegal.”
Khan explained that Saturday’s appeal was in respect of the Karachi division and Monday’s appeals are for seven other districts including Hyderabad, Naushero Feroze, Thatta and Shaheed Benazirabad.
“Since the high court had passed the verdict on 17 different constitutional petitions, the government would be challenging the order separately,” the advocate-general said. “The remaining appeals will also be filed within the prescribed 60-day time period,” he added.
In the appeals, the provincial government alleged that some political parties or individuals are against the urbanisation of various parts of the province in order to ensure that common people in rural areas do not benefit from modern facilities.
Khan maintained in the appeals that none of the political parties had objected to the amendments made to the SLGA as well as the original Sindh Local Government Ordinance 2013, which were tabled in the provincial assembly for discussion. Similarly, no one had objected to the proposal of holding the local bodies election through a panel.
He said that the May 11 general elections were held on electoral rolls that were based on new census blocks created according to the housing census conducted in 2011.
Khan added that more people have become eligible voters since the last census was carried out in 1988 and the government had declared that “these new voters cannot be ignored or disfranchised.”
The government added that delimitation cannot be carried out by the Election Commission of Pakistan because it does not possess the required manpower or resources.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 7th, 2014.
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PPP so out of their depths