SHC dismisses plea against ban on TLP citing availability of alternative remedy avenues

The Sindh High Court (SHC) has dismissed a petition challenging the federal government’s decision to ban the politicoreligious party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) observing that the proscribed organisation has an alternative remedy of review before the federal government.

Issuing its order on the petition, a division bench of the high court headed by SHC Acting Chief Justice Zafar Ahmed Rajput observed that it was an admitted position that if any proscribed organisation was aggrieved by the order of the federal government made under the Section 11B of the Act of 1997, it had a remedy of filing a review application before the federal government.

The high court observed that in the case in hand, the petitioner had failed to disclose his locus standi to maintain instant petition to impugn the notification, as he was not holding any office of the proscribed organisation authorising him to maintain this petition.

The SHC observed that the proscribed organisation had an alternative and efficacious remedy in terms of the Section 11C by filing a review application before the federal government. The bench observed that the general principle was that a litigant should exhaust all available ordinary and/or statutory remedies before invoking the extraordinary constitutional jurisdiction of the high court under the Article 199 of the Constitution, due to which the writ petition filed against a reviewable order was not maintainable.

Regarding the arrest of TLP activists and sealing of mosques, the high court observed that the petitioner had not annexed any list of members of the TLP who had allegedly been arrested, or a list of mosques and Madaris raided by the police.

The SHC observed that even the petitioner did not disclose his relation with any of such alleged arrested members of the TLP, therefore, the said prayer clauses were not entertainable.

The petitioner, Rizwan Ahmed Khan, had submitted in the petition that the federal government had issued a notification imposing a ban on the TLP under the anti-terrorism law after violent protests in Punjab.

He submitted that the impugned notification was illegal and unconstitutional as no constitutional requirement was complied with while issuing the impugned notification. He said police and law enforcement agencies had begun a crackdown on TLP activists, including the petitioner, under the pretext of the impugned notification and thousands of the TLP activists had been arrested or booked in false cases.

The petitioner apprehended his arrest and harassment at the hand of law enforcement agencies. It was said in the petition that raids had been conducted at the residence of the petitioner and other party workers without any lawful reason.

He said police crackdown against TLP activists at their houses, seminaries and mosques was illegal and police be restrained from taking illegal actions. The SHC was requested to declare the impugned notification with regard to ban on the TLP as illegal and unconstitutional.

The petitioner also requested the high court to declare that the arrests of thousands of members of the TLP, and raids at their houses, mosques and seminaries were illegal and unconstitutional.