LHC full bench to hear Model Town case from today

LAHORE: Lahore High Court Chief Justice Muhammad Yawar Ali on Wednesday constituted a three member full bench to hear the petitions relating to 2014 Model Town incident and the bench will start proceedings today.

The bench would be headed by Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan. The other two members of the bench are Justice Aalia Neelum and Justice Sardar Ahmad Naeem.Taking a suo notu on delay in dispensation of justice to the victims, Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar on Saturday last had asked the LHC to decide all petitions pertaining to the incident in two weeks.

The CJP had also directed the anti-terrorism court to conduct trial against accused persons on a daily basis.The appeals have been filed by Idara Minhajul Quran/Pakistan Awami Tehreek against the trial court’s decision of not summoning ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and other political leaders of PML-N on its private complaint.

Former Inspector General of Police Mushtaq Ahmad Sukhera and other officials had also filed appeals against the summons issued to them by the trial court.The trial court in 2017 had partially admitted the complaint of PAT against 125 officials of police and district government.

However, it rejected the complaint to the extent of 12 defendants, including the then prime minister, chief minister and federal/provincial ministers. The court recently indicted 116 police officials in the complaint.

Recruitment embargo: Justice Shujaat Ali Khan of the Lahore High Court on Wednesday referred a petition of the Punjab government challenging Election Commission of Pakistan’s order to put embargo on recruitment in government departments until general election, to the chief justice for formation of a full bench.

Representing the Punjab government, advocate general Punjab Shakirur Rehman pleaded that under the Constitution government could not be barred from performing administrative work and such ban would create hurdles in government’s way to discharge its lawful duties due to scarcity of staff.

He pointed out that people would be badly affected by the ban as a large number of common people daily visited different government departments to get their grievances redressed but they would return unattended due to non-availability of staff.He requested the court to set aside ECP’s order being unreasonable and uncalled for.