‘Ridiculing army, judiciary’: Plea against Hashmi’s candidature dismissed

IHC issues notices to govt officials over IT employees’ pending salaries.

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday dismissed a petition challenging the candidature of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s suspended president Makhdoom Javed Hashmi for contesting by-elections on October 16.

IHC’s registrar office had raised objections over the petition stating that the petitioner has no locus standi as he is not the directly aggrieved person. Secondly, it stated that the petitioner can avail an alternate remedy by filing an application before the Election Commission of Pakistan.

The petitioner, Muhammad Afzal, had maintained that Hashmi should be stopped from contesting by-elections from NA-149, Multan. Afzal said Hashmi had made allegations against the Pakistan Army and judiciary which had brought a bad name to the two ‘prestigious’ institutions.

Pending salaries

In a separate case, Justice Noorul Haq N Qureshi, while hearing a contempt application against the secretaries of Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, Ministry of Finance and Planning Commission, asked the respondents to submit a reply over the matter of contractual employees of the IT ministry who have sought a release of their salaries.

The court also directed the National IT Board’s executive director and Accountant general of Pakistan revenue (AGPR) to submit their reply in 10 days.

On July 7 this year, the same bench had ordered the officials to release the salaries of the employees. Petitioner Aoun Muhammad and others had adopted before the court that they were employed on a contract basis by the IT ministry as network administrators for the Federal Government Data Centre project in 2004.

The project was aimed at providing IT infrastructure to all federal divisions, ministries and inter-connecting them through a secure data centre.

At the time, when they were appointed their basic pay scale was not determined, but later in March 2005, the federal government issued a notification stating that the petitioners may be considered equivalent to grade-18 employees.

In 2007, the IT ministry revised the PC-1 of the project but the salaries of the petitioners were not enhanced. The petitioner informed the court that the respondents had flouted court orders as they did not release their salaries.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2014.