LAHORE, April 18: The president of outlawed Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, Maulana Azam Tariq, on Friday asked the Lahore High Court to suspend the state orders freezing his party’s bank accounts and imposing functional restrictions on it, till a decision on his petition against the ban on SSP.

The court issued notice to the federal government for next month for a response to this plea and to Maulana’s previously filed petition against the state orders banning his party.

The petitioner’s counsel, Dr Farooq Hassan, submitted that the state’s decision to freeze the accounts of his client’s party had brought its social and humanitarian work to a halt. Besides, the closure of the party’s regional offices at Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Jehlum, Multan, Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, DG Khan, Peshawar and Quetta had also affected the social functioning of the party, he argued.

As claimed by the counsel, the proscription of SSP had also adversely affected its religious functions since hundreds of mosques including Farooq Azam Masjid and Jinnah Masjid at Karachi drew funds for their maintenance from the party’s coffers. Prior to the freezing of party’s accounts, the petitioner was financing the studies of nearly 350 students at the postgraduate level.

Lastly, the petitioner claimed to have sustained a loss of at least Rs7.7 million, which were to be generated by collection of hides of sacrificial animals on Eidul Azha this year. Owing to the ban on SSP, even Zakat and Fitrana could not be collected resulting in party’s failure to support the needy people, the petitioner claimed.

Dr Hassan requested that the orders banning the party’s social and religious functioning be suspended till the disposal of petition. Following his discussions with the government, Maulana had reasons to believe that “unreasonable and unlawful” actions against religious parties would be withdrawn, he submitted.

In the petition for lifting the ban on SSP, Maulana had submitted that his party had been declared a terrorist organization by the former military regime without any legal justification.

According to the petitioner, the decision had become ineffective after the restoration of the 1973 constitution. Under the Political Parties Act 1962, only the Supreme Court had the authority to ban the activities of a political party, he claimed adding that his party as well as seven others had been outlawed by an individual with one stroke of pen.

The Maulana claimed that there was no evidence available to suggest that his party had ever indulged in any activity prejudicial to the sovereignty of the country.