Supreme Court to be consulted on YouTube ban

Petitioner’s counsel says they are waiting for an order from the Lahore High Court.

LAHORE:

The Supreme Court is yet to be approached for clarification of its order regarding ban on YouTube, as directed by the Lahore High Court last week.

On May 13, a division bench of the LHC had directed petitioner Bytes for All to approach the Supreme Court in this regard. In the meantime, the court stopped proceedings on the petition for restoration of access to the website.

The LHC had issued these directions to the petitioner when the federal government had informed the court that they had imposed the ban on the orders of the Supreme Court.

Advocate Yasser Latif Hamdani, counsel for Bytes for All, said that they were waiting for an order from the LHC. He said the Supreme Court would be moved once the order was obtained.

Hamdani said the SC had only directed the Ministry of Information to block the controversial video from YouTube but the ministry had blocked the entire website. A deputy attorney general said the order was meant to block YouTube as there was no mechanism available to block only the controversial video.

On a previous hearing, technical expert Salman Akhtar had told the court that YouTube access could be restored in Pakistan with warning pages before access to controversial material.

The expert said due to efforts of Ministry of Information Technology and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), Google had flagged many videos with warning pages. He said these pages warned the user that they were requesting objectionable content.

Proceedings against Khan dropped

The LHC chief justice last week dropped proceedings against Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan after he expressed regret over the disturbance caused at the courts on his arrival a few days ago.

The CJ also disposed of the petition filed by National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq against an order of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to a returning officer to inspect the election record of NA-122.

The chief justice referred the matter to the ECP to decide. He said if the ECP did not select some officer from the Punjab or the federal government, it should consult the judiciary before appointing a judicial officer. Sadiq, in his petition, had said that the returning officers were not answerable to the ECP once the elections were over.

Stay against GMOs

The LHC last week issued a stay order against the issuance of licences for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) until the licence issuing authority was brought under legal cover. The LHC had issued the order on a petition of Kisan Board Pakistan challenging the functioning of National Bio-safety Committee (NBC) under the supervision of the federal government after the 18th constitutional amendment.

Fortress Stadium

LHC last week warned the Fortress Stadium management that activities on Fortress Square plaza would be stayed if it failed to submit replies by the next hearing on a petition challenging construction of the plaza on land specified for military purposes. The judge said this after learning that the management and Dupak Pakistan Developers, the marketing contractor, had not filed their replies so far. The judge warned the respondents that a failure to submit replies in a week shall prompt the court to suspend all construction and property transfer activities at the plaza.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 19^th, 2014.