April 23, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 16, 1429

RAWALPINDI, April 22: A division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), comprising Justice Sardar Mohammad Aslam and Justice Raja Saeed Akram, on Tuesday issued a stay order against the dispossession of families of the deceased or retired government servants till the disposal of an intra-court appeal about accommodation and allotment rules of the federal government.

Sub-section 15 of Accommodation & Allocation Rules 2002 of the federal government, which allows sons, daughters and wives of the retired or deceased government servants to retain the official residences allocated to their fathers or husbands in case they themselves are also government servants, was suspended by Justice Nasim Sikandar of the Lahore High Court (LHC) in his March 30, 2006, ruling.

Initially, a petition was filed by Chaudhry Mohammad Arif and later Chaudhry Anwar along with 10 other petitioners filed an intra-court appeal before the IHC. About 60 to 70 other petitioners also joined them in their appeal.

The petitioners were of the view that the sub-section 15 had been in practice since long and it was based on humanitarian considerations and basic human rights. As most of the government servants do not possess a residence of their own, many face displacement after the implementation of the LHC’s ruling.

Najmuz Zaman Advocate, on the last hearing of the case, had argued before the court that the LHC judge did not heard the attorney general before giving this decision.