KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Friday granted last chance to the federal authorities to inform the court about the status of publishing final result of the population census pending before the Council of Common Interests.

The two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar said that if comments were not filed by the federation till Sept 24, the matter would be disposed of on the basis of available documents.

The provincial law officer sought direction for publication of final result of census held in 2017 within a reasonable period while the Election Commission of Pakistan also said that final result be published before the delimitation of local government constituencies in Sindh for fair exercise of delimitation.

When a petition of Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan against the delimitation of local government jurisdictions in Sindh came up for hearing, the lawyers for the ECP and the petitioners filed statements.

The ECP also submitted a copy of an undated order passed by its head and four members on two applications filed by PPP leaders raising a question about the exercise of delimitation on the basis of provisional result of census and argued that it could not be done without officially published result.

PTA asked to block ‘offending’ websites

The ECP disposed of these applications on the ground that since requisite notifications and maps, etc, were not provided by the Sindh government, the process of delimitation of local government constituencies in the province initiated by the ECP was deferred for the time being.

The special secretary of ECP Zafar Iqbal Malik informed the bench that before delimitation, the official result of census must be published for a fair exercise.

The bench noted that on the last hearing, a joint census commissioner of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics informed it that the final result of census had already been sent to the CCI and after its approval the same would be announced.

Therefore, the bench had asked deputy attorney general Kafeel Abbasi to seek proper instructions, but on Friday he again sought some time since no instructions were passed to him.

At this point, Advocate General of Sindh Salman Talibuddin proposed that the petition might be disposed of with direction to publish final result of census within a reasonable period of time so that the delimitation exercise may be initiated and the LG elections may be conducted within the time as prescribed under the Elections Act, 2017. However, the DAG requested for “short time” to seek proper instructions from the CCI.

The MQM-P challenged the constitution of committees for delimitation of local government jurisdictions in the province and contended that the exercise of delimitation could not be carried out unless the final results of the population census were officially published.

‘Offending’ websites

The same bench on Friday directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to block “offending, obscene and blasphemous” material available on different websites in the country and submit a progress report.

The bench issued these directions on a petition filed against a website for deliberate and malicious attempts to outrage religious feelings of Muslims.

The deputy directors (law and licensing) of PTA informed the bench that they had already blocked the blasphemous website in question.

The director licensing PTA Salam Baig further submitted that in order to deal with such type of blasphemous material outraging feelings of any religion, they have already laid down a procedure and complainant may text them the complaint including the URL of the website for prompt action.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2020