Skip to main content

SC asked to set aside IHC order rejecting plea against Zulfi Bukhari

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court was requested on Monday to set aside the March 30 order of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that had rejected a plea against the prime minister’s aide Syed Zulfiqar Abbas Bukhari, popularly known as Zulfi Bukhari, for his alleged role in allowing pilgrims to enter Pakistan without undergoing mandatory quarantine.

The Civil Society of Pakistan organisation moved the petition before the SC through advocate Tariq Asad, seeking leave to appeal against the March 30 IHC order.

The high court had dismissed the earlier petition, saying that it was not the time to raise controversies or to doubt the intention of the state and its functionaries in meeting the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The high court, while dismissing the petition, had also highlighted the need to remain united and trust the state and its functionaries, saying the jurisdiction of the high court could not be exercised for initiating inquiries.

Petition says PM aide’s alleged role in allowing return of pilgrims from border caused spread of Covid-19

In response, the petitioner pleaded before the SC that instead of hearing the parties and considering their arguments, the IHC chief justice recorded his personal views and estimation in dismissing the petition.

This was done at a time when the SC, the petition argued, in an identical matter had considered this issue to be of great public importance.

The controversy stems from the fact when Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development Zulfi Bukhari allegedly used his influence to allow ‘Zaireen’ (pilgrims) from Iran to enter Pakistan from the Taftan border, without completing the 14-day quarantine requirement, after Iran allegedly ordered Pakistani pilgrims to leave the country.

The petition regretted that the government of Pakistan too failed to exercise diplomatic channels and influence over the neighbouring country to keep the pilgrims with it for a while and provide them with facilities in view of the prevailing situation.

Instead the pilgrims from Iran were shifted from the Taftan border to different cities of Pakistan, including Multan, Sukkur and Faisalabad, the petition alleged.

These areas, before the shifting of the pilgrim, were not affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the petition alleged.

When it was decided to shift 3,000 pilgrims out of the total of 9,000 from Taftan to Faisalabad and keep them in the hostels of the Agriculture University, the petition recalled, the IHC was approached to seek a directive that the pilgrims should not be allowed to move to Faisalabad, which then was not afflicted with the pandemic.

Instead of controlling the spread of the deadly virus, the petition alleged, the government unfortunately allowed the pilgrims to move to Faisalabad.

The petition highlighted that the purpose of moving the plea before the high court was to ensure that the lives of the people of this country, irrespective of their cast or creed, remained protected.

Emergency-like situation

The petition was filed in the high court as the pilgrims were returning back directly from a country which was badly affected by the coronavirus outbreak and that too without any medical test. Their arrival had created an emergency-like situation in the city.

Thus, the petition argued, the government failed to take proper measures in time to control the pandemic. It was a constitutional obligation of the federal government to properly quarantine persons coming from infected areas like China, Iran, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The petition also highlighted that even the country like Afghanistan timely sealed its borders that helped it in controlling the spread of the deadly virus.

The petition argued that the high court order was not in accordance with the law, adding that the government had failed to control the spread of the disease.

The petition alleged that some immature cabinet members were taking irrational steps.

The petition regretted that the IHC’s decision to dismiss the petition in such a manner on an important national issue of great public importance amounted to deny the exercise of jurisdiction vested in the high court under Article 199 of the Constitution and thus the high court acted entirely prejudicial to the interest of justice, law and the Constitution.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2020



from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/3bEz3LX
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more