LAHORE: Justice Ali Baqar Najafi of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday overruled an office objection to a civil miscellaneous application of Leader of Opposition in National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif seeking implementation of a court order that gave him a one-time permission to go abroad for his medical treatment.

The registrar office had objected to the maintainability of the application, saying Shehbaz did not approach the relevant forum (the executive authority) and directly moved the court.

The application was fixed before Justice Najafi for hearing as an objection case.

However, Justice Najafi overruled the office’s objection and directed the registrar office to fix the application for hearing before an appropriate bench.

Later, the office fixed the hearing of the application for Wednesday (today) before Justice Najafi.

The judge had on May 7 permitted Mr Shehbaz to visit the United Kingdom for his medical treatment and observed that he won’t be stopped from going abroad for being placed on a ‘blacklist’.

However, the immigration officials at the Lahore airport stopped the opposition leader from boarding a reserved flight on the pretext that his name was also on the Provincial National Identification List (PNIL), another category of no-fly list, which was not updated yet.

Shehbaz initially filed a contempt of court petition against the officials of the interior ministry and immigration staff. However, the LHC registrar office did not entertain it, saying the contempt petitions did not fall in the categories of the cases permitted to be instituted during the enforcement of Covid-19 related standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Therefore, Shehbaz’s legal team moved the civil miscellaneous application, urging the court to get its May 7 order implemented.

The application pleads that the excuse for not permitting the petitioner to proceed abroad was lame and false because a mechanism to update the Integrated Border Management System (IBMS), placing or removing names in the stop lists functions round the clock. It argues that the respondents with mala fide intention deliberately disobeyed and defied the court’s order.

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2021