Court moved for taking up Kashmir issue with UNSC

LAHORE: Jamat-ud-Dawa Chief Hafiz Saeed has approached the Lahore High Court for directions to the federal government to take up the Kashmir issue with United Nation’s Security Council.

Hafiz Saeed on Friday filed an intra court appeal before the LHC against its single bench’s order which dismissed his petition on August 23. Saeed’s counsel AK Dogar in the petition said the single bench in its order had ruled that ‘the matter is not justifiable 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.”

Advocate Dogar said the bench had not given grounds to justify its order; therefore, it needed to be declared illegal and against the justice norms. He said the conduct of a government’s foreign policy was a political question. But the fact is that the present petition does not require us to devise the country’s foreign policy or to direct the government in that regard. He said this petition only seeks to enforce the people’s right to know the truth about what their government and its functionaries are doing in this regard and that is by no means a political question, he said, adding that it was a fully justifiable fundamental right enumerated in chapter II of the Constitution.

Dogar pointed out that the single bench could not have sidetracked the issue. He submitted that the order of the single bench amounts to abdication of the power of the judicial review.  On August 23, the single bench of the LHC had dismissed the petition for being non maintainable. Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah heard the petition filed by Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed.

In the petition, he had submitted that India had been committing atrocities on Kashmiris and violating the resolutions passed by the UNO. He said that India also did not give Kashmiris their right to self-determination. For the last more than two months, he said, the Indian forces had been attacking innocent Kashmiris. He said the peace had been on stake in the entire region in case war started between Pakistan and India.

He requested the court to order the federal government to take up the issue of Kashmir with Security Council in order to force India to implement the Security Council’s resolution passed in April 1948 and highlight the issue at international level. However, a federal law officer contended that the petition was not maintainable.