ISLAMABAD - Pakistan People’s Party Monday urged Chief Justice Saqib Nisar to improve the judicial system instead of trying to bring reforms in the other institutions.
Speaking to journalists here, PPP’s opposition leader in the National Assembly Khurshid Shah said the courts had a long list of pending cases, which also invited attention.
“Settling the cases is also part of governance. First the CJ should improve the performance of his own institution and then he can turn to other institutions,” he said.
The PPP leader said the courts were meant to dispense justice not to rule the country. He proposed the number of Supreme Court judges should be increased to 35. “The number of Lahore High Court judges should be 60-80, while it should be 45 for the Sindh High Court,” Shah said.
The opposition leader said people were waiting for the resignation of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf lawmakers from the parliament. “After Imran Khan’s announcement of resignations, there has been a silence. If the [PTI] leader had made an announcement, the resignations should have come,” he quipped.
Shah said the PTI lawmakers had drawn millions worth of salaries from the parliament and “they must return that money.”
He said the PPP would not allow anyone to derail the democratic system. “We stand with democracy. We will not be part of any conspiracy against the system,” Shah maintained.
About the alleged patronage of PPP co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari for sacked Senior Superintendent of Police Rao Anwar, he said, the Sindh government or Zardari were not supporting him. “This is a case of a murder [of Naqeebullah Mehsud]. There should be investigations. Rao Anwar should face the investigation,” he contended.
Meanwhile, on Monday, PPP’s Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the Bill - on Federally Administrated Tribal Areas’ reforms, recently passed by the National Assembly and sent to the Senate, contained some serious anomalies, which he would seek to rectify by moving amendments.
Speaking at a seminar organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute here, he said, the extension of court's jurisdiction would be contingent upon a government notification even after its enactment. “An official notification cannot supersede the will of the parliament. The parliament also should not give its powers into the hands of the bureaucracy,” he added.
Babar recalled that like the Fata the superior courts initially also did not have jurisdiction over the Provincially-Administered Tribal Areas in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa including Chitral, Dir, Swat and Malakand.
However, in 1973 this jurisdiction was extended though an Act of the parliament to the Pata without requiring government notification, he reminded. “Why is it designed differently now? Is the purpose political point scoring and not giving the people their fundamental rights,” Babar asked.
Secondly, he said, the court's jurisdiction would be extended to selected tribal areas in piecemeal and asked as to why it must be extended to villages and tehsils only and not to the entire region.
“The people of tribal areas have waited for 70 long years to get access to justice and fundamental rights and now through this dubious mechanism, they will be deprived of their rights for another half a century,” he said, demanding immediate application of the law to the whole of the Fata.
Babar said that piecemeal notifications of extending superior court's jurisdiction would give rise to suspicions that it was being done to create an opening for Dr Shakil Afridi's release under foreign pressure. The lawmaker said he was not against Afridi’s release because he was not sentenced for facilitating operation against Osama bin Laden but sentenced under the Frontier Crimes Regulation for an entirely unrelated alleged offence of helping Mangal Bagh.
He rejected the objections of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-Fazl) and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party against the bill as being “unconstitutional”. The senator said articles 175(2) and 247(7) both provided that legislation could be made by parliament for extending jurisdiction of superior courts to a tribal area.
He said that after necessary amendments the legislation would be a giant leap forward in securing fundamental rights of the people of the tribal areas and for dismantling the FCR. “Article 1 says tribal areas are part of the territories of Pakistan. As such the people of [the] Fata should have the same fundamental rights as are available to people of other parts of the country,” he said.
The lawmaker said the Peshawar High Court in 2014 had suggested extending the jurisdiction of a superior court to the tribal areas. “The provincial assembly of [the] Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa passed unanimous resolutions to this effect. Fundamental rights cannot be abridged even by the parliament,” he argued.
Shafqat Ali