LAHORE, Nov 5: The Lahore High Court chief justice on Monday directed its Registrar’s Office to consolidate petitions against government’s failure to remove blasphemous material on internet and fix their hearing before Justice Ijazul Ahsan on Nov 7.

The Chief Justice, Umar Ata Bandial, issued this order on an application filed for early hearing of a pending petition on the matter. Lawyer Azhar Siddique, the applicant, pleaded the high court had ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block access to the websites containing blasphemous material but the authority miserably failed to comply with the direction. He pointed out that dozens of such websites were still accessible in Pakistan.

The lawyer requested the CJ to order early hearing of the petition so that the PTA could be asked to explain the reasons of the failure.

A law officer told the court that many identical petitions were pending before different high court judges.

The CJ admitted the application and directed the Registrar’s Office to consolidate all such petitions and place them for hearing before Justice Ijazul Ahsan.

Plea dismissed The Lahore High Court chief justice on Monday dismissed an application for early hearing of a pending petition seeking disqualification of Governor Sardar Latif Khan Khosa.

A lawyer, who was the petitioner in the case, pleaded that the petition against the governor was pending adjudication for the last many months. He urged the court to fix hearing of the petition at the earliest and decide the same.

The chief justice, however, observed that the cases were not fixed on wish of any individual. “The applicant did not take any interest in the case and now he wants the court to decide the case on his wish,” the CJ remarked and dismissed the application.

The petitioner had in the main petition pleaded that Khosa was not eligible to become a governor for being removed from his two previous offices -- attorney general and prime minister’s adviser on information technology.