PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench has restored the administrator to the Mardan Chamber of Commerce and Industries by suspending an order of the federal commerce secretary to set aside his appointment and asked rival groups to maintain status quo on disputes related to the chamber’s annual elections, including the scrutiny of voter list.

Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Younas Taheem directed the respondents, including the director general (trade organisations), commerce secretary and MCCI secretary general to submit comments on a petition filed by member of the MCCI’s executive committee Qismat Ahmad, who challenged the Oct 3 order of the commerce secretary commerce to cancel the appointment of the MCCI administrator by the DGTO.

The bench fixed Oct 21 for the next hearing into the petition and ordered the parties to maintain status quo on the issue.

Barrister Yaseen Raza appeared for the petitioner and said two MCCI groups were at odds over different election-related issues including the voters eligible to participate in the annual polls. He stated that there were objections about overall eligibility of 95 of the voters.

He said the DGTO issued an order on Sep 12 under section 16 of the Trade Organisations Act for the appointment of a senior journalist and former member of Mardan Press Club, Mussarat Assi, as the administrator of MCCI and he was assigned the job of conducting scrutiny of the voters list so as to remove the ineligible voters from the list.

Barrister Yaseen stated that one of the group including the outgoing president Sajjad Ahmad challenged the appointment of the administrator before the civil court, but failed to get any relief from that forum.

He pointed out that the secretary general and the ex-president Sajjad Ahmad then moved the Peshawar High Court seeking interim relief against appointment of the administrator and requesting the court to set aside the order of DGTO. He added that the high court also did not grant any interim relief to them.

The lawyer said after the former MCCI president failed to get any relief from the high court and civil court, he approached the secretary commerce and filed appeal with him against the order of the DGTO. He added that under the relevant Rule 18 (7) of the Trade Organisations the DGTO was the final forum and against his order appeal could not be filed before the commerce secretary but the secretary still exercised the jurisdiction and set aside the DGTO order.

Barrister Yaseen said while setting aside the administrator’s appointment, the commerce secretary directed both parties to again approach the DGTO for decision the issue ‘on merit’.

He said under the law, Sajjad Ahmad and his cabinet ceased to exist on Sept 13 but he still pretended to be the MCCI president before the commerce secretary.

The lawyer said the commerce secretary had no authority to set aside the order of DGTO, especially at the time when the writ petition of the rival group was pending before the PHC.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2017