KARACHI: Plea against domicile status rule comes up before SHC
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, Feb 21: A constitutional petition questioning the validity of Rule 6 (iii) of the Public Service Commission Rules, by which domicile of a candidate cannot be treated as that of his or her father’s place of birth, came up before a division bench of the Sindh High Court, on Thursday.
The bench comprised the Acting Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court, Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed, and Justice Ali Aslam Jaferi.
The CP has been filed by Kadir Shaikh and Ashiq Husain, through counsel Mohammed Nawaz Shaikh.
The petitions were initially allowed by the same division bench, but they were questioned before the Supreme Court, which remanded it back to the High Court. For some time the matter has remained dormant because of non- availability of the government side.
The court had issued notice to the Attorney-General in terms of the directions of the Supreme Court dated Jan 17, 2002, but neither on the last date nor today anyone on his behalf appeared.
The court also noted that there was no representation on behalf of the respondents, ie, the federal government and the Federal Public Service Commission.
The court in its order deemed it necessary to clarify that notices having been duly served upon the Attorney-General as well as the respondents, it might justifiably proceed on the next date, even in their absence.
The court, nevertheless, ordered to issue fresh notice to the Attorney- General and his deputy to be present on Feb 26 and directed the Federal counsel, S. Tariq Ali, to inform both the law officers accordingly.
On Nov 30, 2001, a division bench of the Sindh High Court had held that candidates appearing in various government examinations should be treated to be domiciled in the province where they had been born and brought up, and not on the basis of their father’s domicile.
Justice Zahid Kurban Alavi and Justice Mujeebullah Siddiqui had passed the order in a constitutional petition of Shazia Murad and others.
Represented by counsel Khalid Jawaid Khan, the petitioners had appeared in the superior services examination and had urged that they should be treated as domiciled in Sindh as they had been born and brought up in this province and not in Punjab.
The counsel had submitted before the division bench that similar matters had been decided by this court as well as the Balochistan High Court. The matter had also gone to the apex court where interim relief was granted in civil appeals No 1279 and 762 of 1999. In both these matters, the candidates were to be treated as domiciled in the place where they had been born. Necessary instructions had been issued in this regard.
The matter will now come up on Feb 26.
PEARL CASE: The administrative judge for the anti-terrorism courts put the advocate-general Sindh on notice for Feb 25, when an application by parents of one of the remanded suspects in Daniel Pearl kidnapping case came up in which permission was sought to meet him in custody.
Khawaja Naveed Ahmed, representing Fahd Saleem, one of the three suspects who had been remanded in police custody on Feb 14, filed the application, contending that mother of the accused was very sick and she desired to meet her son.
Fahd was among the three suspects in the kidnapping of the Wall Street Journal’s journalist Daniel Pearl who were remanded in police custody for 14 days by Justice Shabbir Ahmed of the Sindh High Court, after controversy over jurisdiction had been resolved following the advocate-general Sindh’s submissions.
According to the investigating officer, the accused had sent e-mails which they had admitted to having sent.
The three accused were arrested in Gulistan-i-Jauhar for their alleged involvement in sending e-mail messages containing the abducted journalist’s pictures in captivity, allegedly on the instruction of the prime suspect, Shaikh Omar Saeed, who has also been arrested and remanded in police custody.
Remand of all the four accused expires on Feb 25.
ZARDARI: A division bench of the SHC directed on Thursday the health secretary to constitute a medical board for examining appellant Hakim Ali Zardari, whose bail application came up for consideration.
The bench consisted of Justice Ghulam Nabi Soomro and Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany.
The medical board has been directed to submit its findings on or before March 1, on which date the bail application will again come up for consideration.
Mr Zardari who is required in accountability reference No 7/2000 for allegedly accumulating properties which are incompatible with his known legitimate source of income, was represented by Barrister Kamal Azfar and Yusuf Leghari, advocate.
