LAHORE: The registrar of the Supreme Court of Pakistan has returned a writ petition filed by two members of the Board of Governors of the Pakistan Cricket Board against the PCB for taking no appropriate action against its media rights company which allowed a UK-based batting company to live stream the 2020 Pakistan Super League matches.

Shakil Shaikh, the ex-member of the BoG, along with suspended member Nouman Butt filed a joint petition last week. However, the registrar has returned back it raising five objections to it.

The first objection raised by the court was that the matter involved is a matter of individual grievance and the original jurisdiction of the court cannot be invoked by filing a constitution petition under Article 184(3) of the Constitution as held by this court in the judgment reported as 1998 SCMR 793 titled as “Zulifqar Mehdi vs PIA, etc”.

Secondly, the court said, the petitioner has not pointed out as to what questions of public importance in the instant case are involved with reference to enforcement of any of the fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution, so as to directly invoke jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under Article 184(3) of the Constitution.

The third objection was that the petitioner, instead of agitating the issues, before appropriate forum, is directly invoking the extraordinary jurisdiction of the Supreme Court with no proper justification shown for it.

The language of the constitution petition is ambiguous and misconceived as contents of the petition are not interlinked with each other, was the fourth objection raised the court.

The fifth objection cited by the court was that the certificate provided at page 8 of this constitution petition does not fulfill the requirements of Rule 6 of Order XXV of the Supreme Court Rules, 1980.

Meanwhile, the abovementioned BoG members in a press statement said that “an in-Chamber Appeal has been filed under Diary No. 8331/2020 today (18.6.2020) against the return order Dated 17.6.2020 of Assistant Registrar (Civil-II)for Registrar Supreme Court of Pakistan in the Constitutional petition filed by the two BoG members”.

Published in Dawn, June 19th, 2020