LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has ruled that President of Pakistan Dr Arif Alvi by not taking prompt action to resolve the issue of administering oath to the Punjab Chief Minister-elect has exposed his lofty office that will destroy public trust and respect necessary for such office to represent the unity of the republic.

“As the oath is to Almighty Allah and not to the Governor, who carries out ministerial act of administering oath, therefore, in the eventuality when he is incapable and is not willing to administer oath or when he is impracticable for any reason, and on the other hand his act of avoiding to nominate any other person amounts to transgressing the constitutional mandate as despite lapse of nine days from election of the Chief Minister, administration of oath is being avoided,” Chief Justice Muhammad Ameer Bhatti observes in his detailed verdict issued on the petition of Chief Minister-elect Hamza Shehbaz.

Through a short order, the chief justice had on Wednesday advised the Punjab governor to ensure completion of the process of the administration of oath to the chief minister-elect either himself or through his nominee not later than April 28. However, no oath-taking ceremony had been held.

In the verdict, the chief justice says the election of the chief minister has not been challenged before any forum and is still intact, therefore, escaping to administer oath by the governor himself is permissible but, in such eventuality, nomination of any other person to administer oath is mandatory under Article 255 of the Constitution.

Consequently, the CJ states, avoiding to administer oath through nominee is tantamount to resiling from his legal obligation, hence, this court while deciding the earlier petition sent the matter to worthy President, being head of the State, for its solution.

However, he notes, as per information provided by the attorney general office the file is still pending without any progress despite receiving advice thrice from prime minister’s office, which was otherwise not necessary.

Therefore, Chief Justice Bhatti regrets, by not taking prompt action to resolve the issue of administering oath of chief minister, for the sake of removal of anomaly of non-existence of functional provincial government exposes the President and his lofty office that will destroy the public trust and respect necessary for such office to represent the unity of the Republic.

The justice observes since both the authorities failed to fulfill their obligations as mandated in the Constitution, in such eventuality, this court being custodian to protect, observe and defend the Constitution, is in all respect justified to exercise the powers provided under Article 199 of the Constitution for the supremacy of law as none whosoever highly placed is above law, constrained to issue the direction mandated by the Constitution to ensure the administration of oath in terms of Article 255 of Constitution, of the newly elected chief minister of province of the Punjab.

ICAs: The registrar office of the Lahore High Court on Thursday returned two identical intra court appeals (ICAs) filed by the MPAs of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and PML-Q challenging two orders of a single bench about the oath taking of Chief Minister-elect Hamza Shehbaz.

The office put several technical objections on the appeals and returned the same to the legal team of the PTI and PML-Q.

PTI parliamentary leader in Punjab Sibtain Khan other 16 MPAs filed the appeals asking the court to set aside the impugned orders passed by the single bench.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2022