Thar deaths case: Chief secretary defends forming commission

Claims he had no restraining order barring him from issuing the notification.

KARACHI:

The provincial chief secretary defended issuing a notification to form a commission to investigate the causes of deaths in Tharparkar. He told the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday that there was no restraining order in the field barring him from issuing the notification.

Chief secretary Sajjad Aslam Hotiana made this submission in his written explanation to the court’s notice on a contempt application.

Last month, the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) had filed a miscellaneous application under Sections 3, 6 and 12 of the Contempt of Court Ordinance 2003 read with Article 204 of the Constitution.

Piler’s representative Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah has said that the SHC, while considering a proposal to form a judicial commission to mitigate and resolve the issues faced by Thar, had directed the advocate-general, the deputy attorney-general and other law officers to suggest the composition and mandate of the proposed commission.

He alleged, however, that the chief secretary had issued directives to form the judicial commission on his own in a deliberate and malafide attempt to subvert, undermine and violate the order dated April 11. The petitioner’s lawyer, Faisal Siddiqui, had pleaded to the court to punish the alleged contemnor for deliberately and willfully violating the court’s order.

Subsequently, the court had suspended the operation of the notification regarding the commission’s formation, and had sought a written explanation from the chief secretary.

Submitting his explanation on behalf of the chief secretary, advocate-general Abdul Fateh Malik said that there was no restraining order of the SHC against the alleged contemnor regarding the formation of the commission. Therefore, the contempt application was not maintainable, as the petitioner had no ‘locus standi’ (entitlement) to file the same, he claimed.

The court was informed that earlier, the notification regarding the formation of the commission was withdrawn. Through another notification, however, the word ‘withdrawn’ was replaced with ‘kept in abeyance’.

Headed by the chief justice Maqbool Baqar, the bench took the AG’s written statement on record and adjourned the hearing till May 23.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 16^th, 2014.