LAHORE - Jamatud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed yesterday moved the Lahore High Court seeking directives to the federal government to highlight Kashmir issue at international forums, including Security Council of the United Nations.
The petition was moved a day after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif addressed the UN General Assembly with main focus on the rights of the Kashmiri people who are being subjected to atrocities at the hands of the Indian troops.
Interestingly, a single bench had earlier dismissed a JuD’s petition on the matter, and now Saeed has moved appeal against that decision.
The JuD chief, through his counsel AK Dogar, challenged the decision of the single bench, saying the bench did not notice that the appellant was seeking enforcement of fundamental right to live with peace and security and without fear of another war with neighboring India.
On August 23, the single bench of the LHC headed by Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah had dismissed the petition of Hafiz Saeed and held that it was not maintainable.
He said he had pleaded to direct the federal government to take the issue at the international level with this view that the people could know what their government and its functionaries were doing on the issue of Kashmir.
He said it is the basic right of citizens to know about the government’s action … it was not a a political question.
He told the court that the single bench observed ‘the matter is not justiciable and falls within the domain of political question.
“The present case has peculiar facts which are fundamentally related to the foreign policy of the government,” the court heard.
The petitioner said that the single bench dismissed the petition but did not provide justifiable ground.
He appealed to the court to set aside the bench’s decision and order the federal government to take up the Kashmir issue at the international level so that the international organisations could know about the Indian atrocities against Kashmiri people.
He further contended that the conduct of a government’s foreign policy was a political question while his petition did not require us to make the country’s foreign policy or to direct the government in that regard. He submitted that his petition was about people’ right to know which was not any political question. Right to information, he said, is justiciable fundamental right guaranteed by the constitution.