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KARACHI, Jan 23: The Sindh High Court on Thursday issued notices to the Establishment Division and the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) on a writ petition questioning lowering of the upper-age limit for the CSS candidates.
Identical petitions were earlier dismissed by the Sindh and Lahore High Courts and the Supreme Court declaring that no candidate had a vested right in the number of chances set down for appearance in the examination conducted by the FPSC for recruitment to the Central Superior Services. The FPSC was empowered to make and alter rules to prescribe the age limit and other qualifications for the candidates.
Appearing for 20 candidates who had not approached the court earlier, Advocate Nawaz Shaikh, however, submitted before a division bench, comprising Justice Mohammad Roshan Essani and Justice Anwer Zaheer Jamali, on Thursday that by a subsequent order on identical petitions by other candidates, the Supreme Court allowed the petitioners another chance despite their crossing the age limit.
The apex court observed in its order that the petitioners had availed of their first chance in response to an advertisement that promised three chances up to the age of 30 years for those seeking direct recruitment and up to 35 years for those already in service. Though they had no vested right, they deserved to get another chance on humanitarian grounds. For no fault of theirs, they lost the opportunity to reappear in the exam when the age limit was lowered from 35 to 30 years for in-service candidates and from 30 to 28 years for those seeking direct recruitment in the year 2001.
Advocate Shaikh submitted that all similarly-circumstanced candidates were entitled to the benefit of an additional attempt under a 1996 Supreme Court judgment. The judgment said that in service matters the dictates of good governance demanded that the benefit of orders in favour of litigants be extended to others who might not have initiated legal proceedings.
The counsel also submitted that there was no justification for lowering the age limit, particularly in view of the duration and requirements of medical and engineering courses. While the FPSC was competent to make rules, it should not do so with retrospective effect and without justification. The rules should not also be amended frequently, he said.
BAIL GRANTED: A division bench of the High Court of Sindh admitted on Thursday accused Mohammed Amin Malik and Ghulam Mohammed Shaikh to bail against a surety of Rs100,000 each.
The bench comprised Justice Shabbir Ahmed and Justice Azizullah Memon.
The accused were arrested by the Soldier Bazaar police under the Banks Ordinance 1984 on a complaint lodged by manager of Soldier Bazaar branch of Muslim Commercial Bank.
The applicants/accused filed bail pleas through Khwaja Naveed Ahmed, advocate. They maintained that instead of forwarding the FIR to the FIA, Crimes in Banking Circle, the SHO Soldier Bazaar police station entrusted investigations to ASI Sarfraz and thus the SHO acted beyond his jurisdiction.
When their bail pleas came up for hearing, the bench noted that police also obtained remand of the accused from the judicial magistrate-II, Karachi East, link judge for the JM-I, though no incriminating material was available against the accused in custody.
After perusing the case file, the bench held that “till date no incriminating material is available against the accused/applicants, therefore their arrest by ASI Sarfraz (of Soldier Bazaar PS) and remand by JM-II are illegal.”
Allowing the bail applications, the bench admitted the applicants to bail.
The bench also said in the order that if any incriminating evidence was collected by any investigating agency, the prosecution could file application for cancellation of the bail.
The prosecution alleges that the applicants tried to get encashed two cheques: one for Rs900,000 and the other for Rs1.3 million.
poll petition: The election tribunal, headed by Justice Ghulam Rabbani of the Sindh High Court, while hearing the election petition of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal candidate Khwaja Sharful Islam permitted him to serve notices to the respondents by publishing advertisements in widely-circulated newspapers.
Khwaja Sharful Islam moved the election tribunal against Muttahida Qaumi Movement MPA Akhtar Mehdi Bilgirami challenging the result of the constituency PS-113 Karachi. He submitted that, according to the compiled results from all the polling stations, he secured the highest number of votes and more than that of his nearest rival.
He alleged elections in his constituency were rigged as, according to all compiled results, he secured 8,697 votes, and the actual number of votes secured by his nearest rival was 8,358, but in the final result, given by the returning officer, his nearest rival was declared the winner by “rigging of 600 votes.”
He prayed to the court to declare him the winner candidate as he secured the highest number of votes.
The next hearing will be held on Feb 3.
The same election tribunal also issued notices to MPA Abdul Haq Bhurt of the People’s Party Parliamentarians and others for Feb 6 on a petition of Murad Ali Shah of the PML (Q), who challenged the result of his constituency PS-20 NausheroFeroz-II.
Mr Shah submitted that the election was rigged and presiding officers of polling stations favoured the PPP candidate. He submitted that Abdul Haq Bhurt also contested under the name of Dost Muhammad and contended that his (petitioner) votes were counted in both names of his rival.
He prayed the court to order fresh counting of votes of six polling stations in the constituency.— APP/PPI
