Awaiting direction: SHC stay orders against tribunal proceedings to end June 23

KARACHI:

The Sindh High Court (SHC) ruled on Monday that its stay orders against the election tribunals’ proceedings on the results of the general elections will stand recalled and vacated on June 23, if the Supreme Court (SC) did not pass any order regarding the high court’s jurisdictions to entertain the pleas against such proceedings.

Meanwhile, a larger bench of the SHC extended its earlier interim orders, further staying the proceedings initiated by the election tribunals at the Karachi, Sukkur and Hyderabad regarding the results of last year’s general elections in different national and provincial constituencies in the province. The bench made this ruling while hearing 13 petitions on the tribunals’ proceedings against the election of leaders belonging to various political parties.

The bench, headed by Justice Munib Akhtar, was hearing the petitions that questioned whether an interlocutory order made by the election tribunal could be challenged in writ petition before the high court.

The SHC bench, while deciding a similar question earlier, had decided that a petition against the tribunal’s order under Article 199 of the Constitution was not maintainable before the high court. In other cases, the Supreme Court has granted leave to appeal, but the order is still awaited.

Taking that into consideration, the larger bench said the stay orders granted by the SHC benches against the tribunals’ proceedings would stand recalled and vacated by June 23, if the SC did not pass any order on the question of the high court’s jurisdictions to hear petitions against the order of an election tribunal.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2014.