09 May 2004	Sunday	18 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

ISLAMABAD, May 8: The All Pakistan Newspaper Society (APNS) filed on Saturday a review petition before the Supreme Court asking to review its earlier order of dismissing the petition challenging The Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) Act 1973.

Filed by senior counsel Hafeez Pirzada on behalf of 25 petitioners, comprising newspaper owners, the review petition contended that there were errors of law floating on record, which justified review of the judgment of dismissal of the constitutional petition.

The review petition said in order to come to the conclusion that whether the case involved any question of public importance or not, the merits of the case should be looked into in the interest of judicial rationality, but the merits of the case while dismissing the case were not looked into at all.

The review said the petition did satisfy tests of public importance laid down by this court in different authoritative pronouncements.

It said there was a direct conflict floating on the surface of the judgment between the concluding paragraph and the finding on merits and unless reconciled it would result in grave miscarriage of justice.

It said the rule of consistency required that the long line and plethora of rules and the judgments of the court on the maintainability of the petitioner under Article 184(3) of the Constitution should have been duly taken note of as was done by the learned judge in the chambers and in any event the relevant portions of the judgment in the case of Benazir Bhutto had been overlooked by the bench.