LAHORE: Punjab Assembly Speaker Malik Muhammad Ahmed Khan claims that some judges are asking a political party to get ready for new elections.

“There is evidence that certain august members of the judiciary are encouraging a political party to prepare for elections,” he said, airing the ruling PML-N ‘fears’ that post-Justice Qazi Faez Isa Supreme Court may nullify the Feb 8 vote.

Speaking at a press conference at the old assembly building here on Monday, Khan claimed having evidence in the form of documents and verdicts that showed how a certain political party was benefited in the past. “I have evidence that why a few articles of the constitution were suspended to benefit a party,” he said.

In a reference to the July 12 Supreme Court verdict on reserved seats, he said the court had demolished the foundation of the Election Commission’s constitutional decision of not allocating electoral symbol to a party that failed to hold intra-party polls for four years only to avert submitting details of its foreign funding and the apex court bench gave the verdict only on assumptions.

The speaker admitted that there had always been politics in the judiciary in past but it should come to an end now, whether its beneficiary is he or his opponents.

Malik Ahmed claims having evidence

“There was lopsidedness in the court of [former] chief justice Umar Ata Bandial as a specific five-man bench would take up all important cases. There was lopsidedness in the [another ex-CJP] Saqib Nisar’s court.”

Responding to a query, he said that he was dissatisfied with the way the government was taking up cases against the PTI.

He said that had he been in the government, he would have instituted cases against former National Assembly deputy speaker Qasim Suri for fraud in the house, would have applied Article 6 (sedition case) to ex-prime minister Imran Khan and then president Arif Alvi for dissolving the National Assembly though a no-confidence motion was pending against the prime minister.

He told a questioner that the PTI was protesting on a foreign agenda. Recalling the party’s sit-in back in 2014 when the Chinese President was due to visit Islamabad, he said now when the Shanghai Cooperation Conference was taking place from Tuesday (today), the party was again out to stage a sit-in. The two incidents could not be a mere coincidence.

The speaker questioned whether a province has the right to launch an assault on the federal capital with cranes and an armed police force.

He expressed his frustration over being required to convene assembly sessions every 14 days on opposition requisition with the single agenda of discussing law and order in the province. Each time, the opposition would raise only the issue of arrest of its MPAs, he added.

He said if any MPA is involved in a law and order situation, the state has the right to take action against him, however, issuing production orders for jailed MPs is the right of the voters he is representing in the house.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2024