ISLAMABD - A larger bench of the Islamabad High Court Wednesday suspended the bailable arrest warrants issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chief Imran Khan in a contempt case.
The special three-member bench comprising Justice Aamer Farooq, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb suspended the top electoral body’s order while directing the counsel for PTI chairman, Babar Awan, to submit a reply to the show-cause notice duly signed by Imran along with an affidavit by September 25.
The court issued these directions after the bench noted that Imran Khan had yet to submit a reply to the show-cause notice and a previous reply of the PTI leader submitted before the ECP did not carry his signatures.
Justice Muhammad Anwar Khan Kasi had constituted a special three-member bench to hear Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s appeal wherein he has challenged the show-cause notice served on him by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for committing contempt of court.
In this matter, Imran Khan has moved the court through his counsel Babar Awan Advocate and cited ECP and Akbar S Babar, a disgruntled member of PTI who is petitioner in PTI’s foreign funding case, as respondents.
According to the petition, the ECP had turned down Imran Khan’s objection petition on August 10, where he had challenged contempt of court proceedings against him saying the ECP has no such powers to proceed for a contempt case against him.
Therefore, he requested the court to set aside ECP’s August 10 order and declare all other contempt related proceedings void, unlawful and without lawful authority.
Babar Awan adopted in the petition that Contempt of Court Act, 1976, is repealed by the Contempt of Court Ordinance, 2003, and contempt proceedings are carried out through the Ordinance of 2003 in Pakistan.
He added that previously, power of contempt before ECP was provided through Section 103A of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1976, wherein it is clearly mentioned that the rules under contempt of court are applicable.
Imran’s counsel maintained that amendments were also proposed by the National Assembly in election bill 2017 and powers of contempt are given to ECP through Section 10 of the bill. “If the election commission already had such powers then why section 10 is inserted in the new election bill,” he questioned. In addition, he said that it is abundantly clear that ECP had “no powers prior to this proposed amendment.”
He continued that ECP has no power to initiate proceedings under Article 204 (Contempt of Court) of the Constitution, adding that no party can be left remedy less and “it is a worst case of abuse of process of law and the impugned order is whimsical, mala fide on law and facts as well as based on abundant bias”.
The petitioner stated in the petition that Akbar S Babar had filed a petition before ECP against the PTI chairman and PTI had submitted written reply before the electoral poll body in due course of law. Later, he said, ECP initiated proceeding against Imran in terms of the order dated 16-01-2017.
In the order of ECP, Justice (Retd) Sardar Muhammad Raza, Chairman ECP observed that Imran filed an application for the review on an order passed on December 1, 2016 but the perusal of the application indicated “blatant disregard of the Constitutional institutions against which filthy and totally false remarks have been passed qua the Commission.”
The ECP chairman added: “no civilised person is expected to malign Constitutional institutions … it appears that the legal as well as civilized manner to be adopted in such proceedings are avoided in order to play politics with the institute from which the remedies are sought.”
He added that the commission shuns and deprecates the attitude and politics being played with the commission. Later, Imran’s counsel, Saqlain Haider, submitted an unconditional apology seeking disposal of the application as withdrawn and it was accepted.
However, Justice Raza’s order read that there is no apology on behalf of Imran and “compliance of the order dated 01-12-2016 be made on 23-01-2017.”
Subsequently, the counsel raised objections to the proceedings on grounds that the ECP has no power to proceed for its contempt. After hearing the petition, the ECP dismissed the same on August 10 which led to the instant petition.
In the current petition, Chairman PTI prayed to the court to set aside contempt proceedings initiated against him by the ECP declaring these unlawful and void.