PESHAWAR, Jan 18: The Peshawar High Court disposed of on Tuesday 37 identical writ petitions challenging a ban on renewal of Kalashnikov licences, and directed the federal government to decide renewal applications of the petitioners within three months.

A two-member bench, comprising Justice Tariq Pervez and Justice Saleem Khan, ordered the petitioners to file fresh applications individually for renewal of their licences before the federal interior ministry.

The court ordered that till the decision on those applications the police and other law-enforcement agencies should not take any adverse action against the petitioners.

The petitioners had challenged an order of the federal government issued four years ago through which the National Bank of Pakistan was directed not to renew licences of Kalashnikovs.

Prior to this ban in early '90s the federal government had cancelled all the Kalashnikov licences and that order was challenged in the high court. The high court had accepted those petitions and declared the order illegal.

The federal government had filed leave to appeal petitions before the Supreme Court. The petitions were dismissed but the Supreme Court had ordered the government to decide the cases of petitioners on case-to-case basis.

Advocates Qazi Mohammad Anwer, Khwaja Mohammad Khan Gara, Samad Khan, Ishtiaq Ibrahim and others appeared for the petitioners. Deputy attorney general Hamid Farooq Durrani appeared for the federal government and said he had received instructions from the government regarding these petitions.

He said the government had suggested that the petitioners should file individual applications and their cases would be decided on individual basis. The bench inquired from him what would be the guarantee that the government would not be involved in pick-and-choose among the petitioners.

Mr Durrani said even if the high court declare the order of the government illegal, the order of the Supreme Court was still in the field according to which they had to deal with these cases on individual basis. After his submissions, the bench directed the petitioners to file fresh applications which would be decided within three months.