LAHORE, July 7: The Lahore High Court adjourned on Monday the petition of banned Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) president Maulana Azam Tariq, seeking the lifting of the ban imposed on his party.

No progress could be made as Maulana Azam Tariq’s counsel Dr Farooq Hasan had gone abroad.

The Maulana had also sought the suspension of the operation of the state’s action — freezing the bank accounts of his party and imposing other functional restrictions on it — till the decision of his petition, challenging President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s orders to ban the SSP.

According to Azam Tariq, his party had been declared a terrorist organization by the former military regime without any justification and the impugned order had no legal recognition.

He claimed that the decision had become ineffective after the restoration of the 1973 Constitution.

Under the Political Parties Act 1962, only the Supreme Court had the authority to ban the activities of a political party like SSP with reasons to be recorded after hearing the version of both the sides.

The SSP and seven others parties had been banned on the orders of an individual.

The Maulana claimed there was no evidence available to suggest that his party had ever indulged in any activity prejudicial to the sovereignty of the country. The SSP had every right of being exempted from the ban because it was a true political party.

The state’s decision to freeze the accounts of SSP had reportedly brought its social and humanitarian work to a halt. Besides, the closure of SSP’s regional offices at Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Multan, Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Dera Ghazi Khan, Peshawar and Quetta had also affected the social functioning of the party, the petitioner argued.

The ban on the SSP had adversely affected its religious functioning. The maintenance of hundreds of mosques, including Farooq Azam Masjid and Jinnah Masjid at Karachi, was being impeded by virtue of such ban.

Azam Tariq claimed to have sustained a loss of at least Rs7.7 million funds, which his party was expected to get through collection of animal hides on the occasion of Eidul Azha this year.

The state had informed the court last month that Gen Musharraf had already sent a reference to the Supreme Court for confirming the ban on the SSP and the court did not have the jurisdiction to hear the matter.