ISLAMABAD, July 4: The Hasba bill has lost much of its religious punch after the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled several of its clauses unconstitutional, but all is not lost for the sponsors of the controversial law.

The controversy over the bill creating mohtasibs, or watchdogs, at provincial, district and tehsil levels, is likely to continue to rage as the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) provincial government will take a revised draft to the provincial assembly it controls.

Political sources said the issue was likely to dominate the campaign for the local body elections in the NWFP, with the critics claiming victory for the removal of some of the most objectionable provisions of the bill and the MMA calling it its partial success, which it has already begun celebrating by announcing a one-month remission in prison sentences.

While lawyers refrained from commenting on the one-sentence short order of the Supreme Court, political leaders said the MMA, the alliance of six religio-political parties, would use it as one of their main election planks in the local body polls to be held later this month and next month.

“It is a boon for the Maulvis,” PPP MNA Aitzaz Ahsan said while commenting on what he saw as a favourable situation for the MMA. “They will tell the people that they wanted to bring Islam (to the province) but the president and the governor did not let them do it.”

The MMA majority in the NWFP assembly had passed the bill on July 14 amid objections from other political parties and human rights groups, most of them calling it a move to Talibanize the province.

The Supreme Court order on a presidential reference cited 17 clauses or sub-clauses of five sections and one full section of the bill as ultra vires of the constitution, most of them relating to the mohtasibs’ powers that critics fear will usher in a system similar to one Taliban had imposed in Afghanistan before being toppled by US-led forces in late 2001.

But the court order, reasons for which are to be recorded later, did not touch the rest of the 31 sections of the bill that provide for the appointment of an Islamic scholar as a provincial mohtasib and similar mohtasibs at district and tehsil levels with their advisory councils and a Hasba force, which critics have likened to Taliban’s religious police.

While NWFP Law Minister Malik Zafar Azam told journalists that the provincial government would move an amended Hasba bill to be drafted in the light of the detailed order of the Supreme Court, there was no indication when the detailed judgment would be issued.

Three clauses in the bill’s section 10 must be deleted under the court ruling, depriving the mohtasib of powers to watch the observance of ‘Islamic values and etiquettes’, watch if the media established by or working under the control of the provincial government uphold Islamic values, and ‘forbid persons, agencies and authorities working under the administrative control of the (provincial) government to act against shariat and to guide them to good governance’.

But other powers of the mohtasib in the same section such as the power to inquire into allegations of maladministration against any agency or its employees and to engage services of experts and consultants were not touched.

Also declared unconstitutional were the mohtasib’s powers to ask for removal of a government employee from service and for legal action similar to what entailed as interference in smooth functioning of government.

But the most drastic was the ruling against nine of 26 clauses of the bill’s section 23 that gave vast special powers to the mohtasib, such as monitoring of adherence to moral values of Islam at public places, following the Islamic code of dowry, discouraging extravagance at marriages and other family functions and monitoring adherence to Islamic values at the times of Iftar and Travih prayers.

Other clauses of the same section declared invalid related to discouraging entertainment shows and business transactions at the times of Friday and Eid prayers around mosques where such prayers were held, removal of ‘causes of dereliction’ in the performance and proper arrangement of such prayers, observing Islamic decorum at the times of Azan and Farz prayers and discouraging un-Islamic and inhuman customs.

Also hit by the ruling are the bill’s provisions in section 25, barring courts or any other authority to question the legal status of the proceedings before a mohtasib or pass any injunction or stay order on any matter under consideration of a mohtasib.

Finally, the court ruled against section 28 of the bill that had made defiance of a mohtasib’s order as a non-cognizable offence punishable with up to six months in prison and a fine of Rs2,000.