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KARACHI The Sindh High Court issued notices to the federal and provincial governments on Wednesday in a petition seeking removal of 12 federal ministers and ministers of state dealing with subjects reserved by the Constitution for the provinces.
The ministers are Justice (retired) Abdul Razzak Thahim, minister for local government; Nazar Mohammad Gondal, minister for food and agriculture; Humayun Kurd, minister for livestock and dairy development; Rehmatullah Khan Kakar, minister for housing; Aftab Hussain Shah Gilani, minister for sports; Shahbaz Bhatti, minister for minorities; Shahid Hussain Bhutto, minister for youth affairs; Mir Ejaz Hussain Jakhrani, minister for health; Muhammad Afzal Sandhu, minister of state for health; Masood Abbas, minister of state for local government; Rafique Ahmed Jamali, minister of state for food and agriculture; and Muhammad Tariq Anees, minister of state for housing.
Advocate Zamir Ghumro submitted on behalf of an organisation named 'Sindh Dost Rabita Council' that the executive authority of the federation and provinces is co-extensive with their legislative authority unless otherwise provided by the Constitution. Under Article 97, executive authority of the federal government extends to the subjects enumerated in the federal legislative list and the concurrent legislative list set out in the fourth schedule to the Constitution.
According to Article 142, he said, a provincial assembly shall, and Parliament (the federal legislature) shall not, have the power to make laws with respect to any matter not enumerated in either the federal legislative list or the concurrent legislative list. The matters specified in the concurrent list are liable to be jointly administered by the federal and provincial governments. The residuary subjects have thus been left to the provinces and they fall within the exclusive legislative and executive authority of the provincial governments.
The subjects of local government, food and agriculture, livestock and dairy development, housing, sports, minorities and health, which have neither been mentioned in the federal legislative list nor in the concurrent list, he said, thus fall entirely within the purview of the provinces and the federal government has no legal authority to appoint ministers to oversee or regulate them.
By the same token, the federal government has no legal mandate to set up a land commission and appoint its chairman (Fazal Shah Gilani). Similarly, railway police inspector-general Asghar Raza Zaidi, deputy inspector-general Anwar Virk and superintendents Muzaffar Shaikh and Chaudhry Muzaffar were unlawfully exercising executive authority in the province of Sindh as railway police has been a provincial subject since the Government of India Act, 1935.
Over-centralisation, the counsel said, has been a bane of Pakistan's political system despite constitutional provisions mandating provincial autonomy and devolution of power. The concurrent list was meant to be eventually transferred to the provinces and the prime minister promised in his first speech to Parliament to do away with it within a year.
The petition requests the court to issue writs of quo warranto requiring the ministers and other respondents to cite the authority of law under which they hold their offices. All federal ministries and institutions outside the scope of the Constitution should be abolished and their funds and staff transferred to the provinces.
A division bench comprising Justices Mushir Alam and Mohammad Athar Saeed issued notices to the respondents for a date in office.
