Plea against CPSP polls dismissed

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Thursday dismissed a writ petition challenging the annual election of College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan scheduled for February 23.

Prof Abdul Mannan Babur, also a candidate, had questioned the election on the plea of non-transparency. The court, however, dismissed the petition, ruling it is not maintainable as the election schedule had already been issued.

Peshawar High Court and LHC Bahawalpur Bench had already rejected petitions of Prof. Khalid Mehmood and Dr Mazhar Rafie, respectively, on the same subject. More than 50 candidates will contest for 20 seats of CPSP elections across the country on February 23.

Services tribunal: Punjab Services Tribunal (PST) disposed of 5,941 cases out of 12,828 cases in 2018, the PST annual report said.

As many as 6,887 cases are still pending. According to a PST spokesman, when Justice (r) Abdul Sami Khan took charge of the post of PST Lahore chairman on June 1, 2018, 9,716 applications were under hearing and more than 3,112 new appeals were filed by December 2018.

The number of total appeals filed in PST by June 12, 2018 to December 31 was 12,828. The orders on 4,231 appeals were issued by the PST. As many as 1,710 orders were issued by the chairman while the other 2,521 decisions were released by five members of the PST. The appeals were filed in PST against government decisions by the penalised officials.