LAHORE: A provincial move to invoke Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure with sweeping, province-wide restrictions has stirred debate among jurists and administrators, who warn that broadly worded prohibitions on public assemblies, carrying of arms, loudspeaker use and “provocative” materials risk duplicating offences already covered by special statutes—often with harsher penalties—and could struggle to pass a proportionality test in court.
Draft language under consideration contemplates a blanket ban on gatherings of four or more persons in public places, save for weddings, funeral rites, official assemblies in government or semi-government offices and courts. Absent explicit carve-outs, organisers and institutions are left guessing: would trade fairs, public seminars and cultural festivals be treated as proscribed “assemblies”; how are Friday congregations that overflow onto streets to be handled; do school or college convocations fall within the prohibition if headcounts cross the threshold; and what becomes of corner meetings and rallies if a constituency enters campaign season. Officials are being urged to replace categorical bans with time-, place- and manner-based conditions, a permit pathway and clear sunset clauses.
The contemplated arms prohibition similarly overlaps with Section 11-B of the Pakistan Arms Ordinance, 1965, which already regulates the keeping, carrying and display of weapons. Unless carefully drafted, a parallel 144 order may muddy charging decisions and enforcement. Routine protection functions also require clarity: licensed private guards deployed by registered companies for banks and markets, cash-in-transit crews on fixed routes, and security staff at hospitals, schools and critical infrastructure typically carry visible arms as a deterrent. Practitioners say the order must codify exemptions for on-duty personnel meeting licensing, uniform and verification requirements, while preserving the statutory leeway of law-enforcement agencies.
On sound amplification, the Punjab Sound Systems (Regulation) Act, 2015 already sets out offences and penalties for misuse, including time windows, device restrictions and—crucially—sanctions that often exceed those available for a generic breach of 144 (usually prosecuted under Section 188, PPC). Any fresh order that merely repeats the Act’s prohibitions, while carving out the conventional use of loudspeakers for Azaan and Khutba, risks confusion and weaker deterrence unless it expressly harmonises enforcement with the 2015 statute.
Expression-related controls raise the most delicate drafting questions. The proposed bar on publishing, disseminating or displaying “provocative, hateful or sectarian” material—including pamphlets, banners and social-media content—sits atop a dense thicket of existing law: the Anti-Terrorism Act, relevant provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code (including Sections 153-A, 295 and 500), and the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act for online content. Where specific offences and procedures already exist—often with higher penalties—courts are likely to interrogate whether an open-textured, province-wide 144 order is narrowly tailored to an imminent threat or amounts to overbreadth and legal mala fides.
Senior Supreme Court lawyer Idrees Ashraf Malik cautioned that any omnibus promulgation must “demonstrably track necessity, proportionality and narrow tailoring” to survive judicial scrutiny. “Section 144 is an extraordinary, time-bound tool to address a specific apprehension of breach of peace, not a parallel penal code,” he noted, adding that province-wide prohibitions without granular risk assessments, geographic targeting and defined review windows “invite successful challenges and erode public trust.” He urged the government to publish a statement of reasons that ties restrictions to concrete intelligence inputs, specify affected localities and dates, and prefer conditions—routes, timings and crowd caps—over absolute bans.
Syed Hassan Raza, a well-known criminal lawyer at the Lahore High Court, said the state should resist the temptation to “charge everything under 188, PPC” when specialised statutes squarely apply. “When the Arms Ordinance, the Sound Systems Act, PECA or ATA cover the field with calibrated elements and higher sanctions, prosecutors must use those primary tracks,” he argued. “Deploying 144 as a catch-all dulls deterrence for serious conduct and over-polices technical breaches. The better practice is to let special laws lead, and reserve 144 for narrow, residual gaps tied to a time-specific apprehension.”
A senior Punjab government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The News that the contemplated restrictions “will not help much” once Section 144 is imposed. “Where specialised laws already exist with stringent penalties, violators could paradoxically benefit if action is routed through a generic 144 order instead of the primary statute,” the official acknowledged, arguing that enforcement must “prioritise the special laws, reserve 144 for narrowly defined exigencies, and avoid creating softer pathways for serious offences.”
Both lawyers pressed for codified exemptions and standard operating procedures to minimise inadvertent violations by ordinary citizens and essential services. These would include worship services—explicitly addressing large Friday congregations—campus events within institutional premises, licensed private security, cash-in-transit movements, and hospital and school security, each subject to verifiable licensing and compliance conditions. They also called for FAQs and a single-window permit mechanism for traders, seminar organisers and cultural bodies.
Enforcement architecture will be equally important. Officials face a practical choice between relying on Section 188, PPC for disobedience of a 144 order or, where elements are met, preferring charges under the more exacting special laws. The latter path, practitioners say, better matches harm with penalty and reduces the risk of indiscriminate arrests. Periodic review and sunset provisions would allow authorities to scale measures up or down as the security picture changes.