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| March 07, 2007 | Wednesday | Safar 17, 1428 |
Supreme Court summons PCB chairman
ISLAMABAD, March 6: The Supreme Court on Tuesday summoned Dr Nasim Ashraf in a petition moved against his appointment as chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board.
Notices to respondents in the case were issued after a brief hearing by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in his chamber, petitioner Wasim Rehan told Dawn after the proceedings. Notices have also been served on the secretary for sports and the PCB chief executive, who are respondents in the petition which will be taken up for hearing in an open court in the first week of April.
Earlier, the Supreme Court office had returned the petition by raising certain objections but the mover filed it again after removing anomalies.
On Oct 7, 2006, President Gen Pervez Musharraf appointed Dr Nasim Ashraf as the PCB chairman under sections 5 and 41 of the PCB constitution after Shaharyar M. Khan resigned following Younis Khan’s refusal to accept the job of captaincy in place of Inzamamul Haq for the Champions Trophy in India.
Being a representative of the NWFP Cricket Association, petitioner Wasim Rehan had pleaded before the court to replace Dr Nasim Ashraf with an experienced person having complete understanding of the game.
Filed under the original jurisdiction on fundamental rights, the petition drafted by Barrister Dr Farooq Hassan pleaded to appoint a reputable audit for examining PCB’s expenditures since 1999. The petitioner also sought a declaration against the PCB ad hoc committee to be illegal.
Reportedly, Dr Nasim Ashraf was a US citizen having lived and worked in the States for 25 years. He had worked with a Pakistani physician’s organisation “American Pakistani Physicians Association” – an organisation which allegedly remained embroiled in local controversies over a long period of time. Besides, he also remained associated with different associations in the US allegedly for advancing his political and personal ambitions, the petitioner stated.
Dr Asharf was brought to Pakistan by the president after the October 12, 1999, coup and was given a federal minister’s portfolio, in addition to his appointment as in-charge of the National Commission for Human Development. He was not qualified for that position and was certainly a non-entity for his present position, the petitioner claimed.
The petitioner stated that both the PCB chairman and the ad hoc committee were occupying the positions by act of usurpation held to be against the constitutional scheme.
He said it was a well-established jurisprudence of the Supreme Court that all government power should be exercised objectively and not on the private will or caprice of relevant state holder of such a power. He maintained that President Gen Musharraf’s personal satisfaction or subjective judgment with regard to such appointments made since 1999 to the office of the PCB chairman seemed unconstitutional.
It should also be authoritatively laid down, he pleaded, whether foreign citizens of countries like the UK or the USA could assume significant positions in Pakistan.
The petitioner said induction by nepotism rather than on merit of three chairmen (Lt-Gen Tauqir Zia, Shahrayar Khan and Dr Asharaf) was deplorable and needed to be examined by the court.
He said an elaborate system of representation should be envisaged for running the affairs of the cricket board.
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