Supreme Court restrains PHC from hearing Worker Welfare Board case

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) Wednesday restrained the bench number 1 of the Peshawar High Court (PHC) from hearing the Worker Welfare Board’s plea seeking constitution of a larger bench.

Hearing the case, a two-member bench of the apex court — comprising Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed and Justice Ijaz ul Ahsan — held that the PHC could not take up the matter unless the appeals pending with the Supreme Court were decided.

The apex court expressed grave concern over the High Court for ignoring the precedent set by it [Supreme Court] and observed that the high court was bound to give decisions in accordance with the principles of the apex court.

Meanwhile, the court also expressed dissatisfaction with the reply submitted by the PHC registrar in the matter. The chief justice said they had issued a notice to the registrar but he had submitted an unsatisfactory reply.

Justice Ijazul Ahsen observed that prima facie, the bench of Peshawar High Court had ignored the Supreme Court decisions. The judge further observed that under Article 189 of the Constitution, the high court was bound to take into account the recent decisions of the Supreme Court.

Attorney General Khalid Javed informed the court that different appeals against the PHC verdicts were pending with the Supreme Court, hence the Peshawar High Court should be restrained from hearing the Board matter until the apex court decided them.

Khawaja Azhar Rasheed, counsel for the Workers Welfare Board, submitted that the high court was ignoring the Supreme Court decisions. Meanwhile, the court restrained the PHC from hearing the instant matter till the decision on appeals pending with the Supreme Court. The court directed its office to club all the pending appeals of the Worker Welfare Board, KP and fix the matter for hearing.