LAHORE, Sept 4: The Lahore High Court observed on Thursday that it should not be surprising if the recall-motion rules recently framed by the government were aimed at providing unbridled powers to the Punjab Local Election Authority (PLEA) since laws had been made for a single person or authority on numerous occasions in the country and the people made to suffer on this account.

Justice Raja Mohammad Sabir made this observation while hearing the petition of Data Ganj Bakhsh Town Nazim Khwaja Hassaan who had challenged the recall motion adopted against him and the subsequent notification issued by the local government secretary to debar him from holding his office.

This notification was withdrawn by the provincial government. The PLEA later issued a notification to restrain the petitioner from using his administrative powers till Sept 30.

The petitioner’s counsel, Umar Atta Bandiyal, argued that the recall-motion rules, promulgated by the government on Sept 1, had given absolute authority to the PLEA to withhold the administrative powers of town Nazims, while under the law a single authority could not be allowed to prejudice the working of democratic institutions.

The counsel asked the court to intervene in the matter, saying that an illegal attempt had been made to throw the petitioner and others out of their offices at the behest of certain quarters.

Mr Bandiyal alleged that the government had “rushed” the framing of these rules in order to thwart the constitutional jurisdiction of LHC since it was quite aware of the fact that the notification issued by the local government secretary was illegal and could be set aside by the court.

“The rationale behind empowering the PLEA to restrain the petitioner and withdrawing the local government secretary’s notification is to prejudice the court proceedings and that’s why the provincial government is claiming that the petition has become infructuous following the PLEA’s notification,” the counsel argued.

He claimed that the recall-motion rules were not promulgated in the legally-prescribed manner as these had not been published in the official gazette.

The counsel alleged that the entire exercise had been carried out in haste to prevent adjudication of the matter on merit, and there was no legal justification for authorizing the PLEA to debar a town Nazim from performing his functions. “If we go by this law, not a single town Nazim would be able to remain in his office for long as the PLEA can debar him any time without being accountable before any other authority for the act.”

The court once again turned down the request of the petitioner’s counsel to suspend the operation of PLEA notification till the next date of hearing with the observation that it was not appropriate to do so without perusing the matter in detail.

More arguments would be made on Sept 8.