Lawyer requests CJ to visit Peshawar to address citizens’ problems

PESHAWAR: A senior lawyer has requested Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar through a letter to visit the Supreme Court’s Peshawar Registry Branch because citizens of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were also facing serious problems of road blockades, checkpoints and clean drinking water.

“This is my third letter to the Chief Justice of Pakistan. I have requested him each time to visit Supreme Court’s Peshawar Registry,” senior Supreme Court lawyer Muhammad Khurshid told The News.

In the three-page letter sent by him four days ago, the lawyer highlighted the problems facing the citizens of Peshawar and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa just like inhabitants of Karachi and Lahore.

In the letter, he recalled that the chief justice, while hearing his miscellaneous applications in suo moto case in Supreme Court Lahore Registry about clean drinking water, had told him that his case would be heard in Peshawar.

The lawyer, who is known for pursuing public interest litigation, praised the chief justice for removing barricades from the roads in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

Highlighting the problem of roads closure due to barricades and erection of walls in Peshawar Cantonment, he submitted that the roads had been blocked in Peshawar for more than a decade in the name of security. Muhammad Khurshid pointed out that a road was closed for security of the Iranian Consulate in University Town and for the US Consulate in Peshawar Cantonment. He submitted that walls had also been erected on the road leading to the Governor’s House and Chief Minister House in the Peshawar Cantonment. He pointed out that a wall had been built on the road towards KP Police Lines and Civil Secretariat.

The lawyer pointed out that Balahisar Fort was closed to public and the Frontier Corps was not vacating it despite the fact that an alternative site measuring over 500 kanals of land in Hayatabad in Peshawar had been earmarked for housing the FC Headquarters and some construction work had already been done there.

In the letter, the lawyer highlighted the condition of the public sector hospitals in the city and requested the Chief Justice to also pay visit to the hospitals in Peshawar. He said that though the PTI-led provincial government claimed to have improved the condition of the hospitals, in reality the conditions there were becoming worst day by day. He also complained that the people weren’t being supplied clean drinking water. Muhammad Khurshid had also filed an application in the Supreme Court at its Peshawar Registry Branch.

He requested the apex court to make him a party to the suo moto cases being heard at its Karachi and Lahore benches so as to plead the case of clean drinking water for the people and prisoners of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said the Chief Justice had told him a month ago that his case would be heard in Peshawar.

The Supreme Court had taken suo moto notice of the issue of provision of clean drinking water to the citizens of Sindh province.

Muhammad Khurshid, who is a former deputy attorney general of Pakistan, submitted that the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were also deprived of safe and clean drinking water as was the case in Sindh. “As per the previous year report of Pakistan Council of Research and Water Laboratory, 11 brands of mineral water out of 70 currently being used in the province and also in the whole country were found polluted and dangerous for health,” he pointed out.