PHC reserves verdict in petitions on LG polls

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Wednesday reserved verdict in writ petitions challenging holding of local government elections 2015 for village and neighbourhood councils on non-party basis and other several sections of the local government law.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Mrs Justice Irshad Qaisar reserved the judgment on two identical constitutional petitions filed by provincial parliamentary leader of Awami National Party (ANP) Sardar Hussain Babak and provincial information secretary of Jamiat UIlema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Abdul Jalil Jan. The bench also heard preliminary objection of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government against the maintainability of three petitions pertaining to certain sections of the KP Local Government Act 2013 and requested the court to reject them all.
During hearing of the cases, lawyer for the government Qazi Muhammad Anwar told the bench that the petitioners were not aggrieved parties in terms of Article 199 of the Constitution and, therefore, the petitions were not maintainable and liable to be dismissed. Lawyers Khushdil Khan and Abdul Latif Afridi of ANP and Mohammad Essa Khan of JUI-F contended that the petitions were maintainable as their respective clients had challenged important provisions of the KP Local Government Act, which would affect all citizens of the province and the parties had allowed them to challenge the act.
Khushdil Khan insisted his client was the parliamentary leader of a political party and under Article 17 of the Constitution, which guaranteed the right to form association, as well as Article 199, he was entitled to file the petition in question. The bench asked the lawyer that when the schedule for local government elections had already been issued and the process had begun, what implications the acceptance of the petitions could cause.