February 16, 2008	Saturday	Safar 08, 1429

LAHORE, Feb 15: Will the deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry be allowed to cast his vote on the day of elections - Feb 18? Will other eligible members of his family be free to go to the polling station and take part in the electoral process?

Caretaker interior minister Gen (retd) Hamid Nawaz says that Justice Chaudhry is a “free man” and is at liberty to cast his vote where he is enrolled as a voter.

“He is not under house arrest. He is a free citizen. He can go anywhere he likes”, said the minister when asked by this correspondent if the government would allow him to use his right to vote.

When it was pointed out that Justice Chaudhry was always restrained from leaving his Islamabad residence whenever he wanted to go somewhere, the minister said: “I don’t know who stops him. Perhaps the relevant authorities don’t allow him to go to a place where his presence may cause some security problem”.

The minister said that if Justice Chaudhry would want to go to the Supreme Court, the government would not let him because judges were working there.

“Otherwise, there is no problem, and he can go anywhere”.

He said the interior ministry has issued no instructions to confine Justice Chaudhry to his residence. He said the provincial government and local administration were taking the decisions keeping in view the security situation.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court Bar President Aitzaz Ahsan and lawyers Tariq Mehmud and Ali Ahmed Kurd, all under detention, are not likely to cast their votes because of a principled decision taken by the lawyers’ community.

The lawyers have decided to boycott the polls and it was because of this decision that Aitzaz Ahsan returned his PPP ticket for a National Assembly seat in Lahore.

The Supreme Court Bar president is detained at his residence and even foreign ambassadors who wanted to meet him were denied access.—Ashraf Mumtaz