MUZAFFARABAD: A second petition for leave to appeal (PLA) a recent judgement by the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) High Court on the appointment of the AJK chief election commissioner (CEC) was filed in the AJK Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The PLA should be granted to assail the High Court judgement of January 12 in writ petition number 2740/15 and respondents be directed that the Dec 29, 2015, notification should be modified according to the spirit of Section 50 of the AJK Interim Constitution Act 1974 and Justice Ghulam Mustafa Mughal, Chief Justice AJK High Court, be appointed permanent CEC, stated the petitioners MLA Chaudhry Tariq Farooq, MLA Najib Naqi and former AJK Bar Council chairperson Raja Sajjad Ahmed through their counsel.

The trio had made a similar plea to the high court in petition number 2740/15. According to the December 29, 2015, notification, Justice Mughal was appointed acting CEC by the AJK government under Section 6-A of Ordinance XIX of 2015.

The high court had struck down the notification as well as Section 6-A of the ordinance. It had asked the president to send a fresh panel of suitable candidates to the AJK Council for its advice in favour of any of them. Raja Inamullah Khan and Raja Mohammad Hanif, counsel for the petitioners for leave to appeal, maintained that instead of attending the basic plea in petition 2740/15, the high court had illegally set aside the December 29 notification even though no such prayer had been made by the petitioners.

In fact, the basic plea in petition 2740/15 was that since the Nov 16, 2015 advice of the council recommended the appointment of Justice Mughal as permanent CEC and AJK Supreme Court Chief Justice Mohammad Azam Khan had also recommended Mr Mughal for appointment as acting CEC, the council and the government appeared to be in agreement on the person of Justice Mughal for the CEC office, they said.

They contended that in such a situation where the council and the government were in agreement on a single name, the requirement of seeking and tendering advice stood fulfilled. The counsel argued that since neither the petitioners nor any other party had sought the court’s declaration against the council’s November 16 advice, the high court’s observation that the advice was illegal and not binding on the president was uncalled for.

Counsel said that in the presence of the consensus in Muzaffarabad and Islamabad on the name of Justice Mughal for the office of CEC, there was no hurdle in the way of the court to direct that Justice Mughal be appointed permanent CEC by amending Dec 29 notification.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2016