Dar moves SC for early hearing of appeal

LONDON: Former finance minister Ishaq Dar on Monday filed an application in the Supreme Court for an early hearing of the appeal, which has been pending before the court since 2018.

Senator-elect Dar filed the application through his lawyers. He had originally filed an appeal in 2018 against an accountability court’s decision to declare him a proclaimed offender. The latest application in the Supreme Court is requesting its intervention to consider his case on merit.

On July 24, 2018, Dar was first “blacklisted” by the Directorate General of Immigration and Passports without any basis or justification, according to his lawyers. That step practically banned the passport authorities in Pakistan as well as the Pakistan missions abroad from issuing Dar a passport.

The PMLN leader’s valid passport was then cancelled on September 6, 2018, by the Imran Khan-led government. The action was taken despite the written request by Dar for the issuance of a requisite passport, being a necessity and a fundamental right for the travelling purposes. He has maintained that it was a draconian step, which violated his basic human rights.

The factum of cancellation of the passport came into the ex-finance minister’s knowledge through media reporting on September 9, 2018, while he was undergoing his medical treatment in the United Kingdom.

Dar’s legal teams said: “The cancellation of Dar’s passport was a violation of law and human rights by the Imran Khan-led government, as a result of which Dar was stranded in the United Kingdom from September 2018 onwards, which made impossible for him to travel to Pakistan even if his health condition had improved.” In May this year, the PMLN leader received in London his new passport, which was issued on April 26 by the passport authorities in Islamabad.