An Islamabad High Court (IHC) division bench on Thursday suspended an earlier order for the removal of retired Major-General Hafeezur Rehman from his post as the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority\u2019s (PTA) chairperson.<\/p>\n
The bench, comprising Justices Muhammad Asif and Inaam Ameen Minhas, had taken up Rehman\u2019s intra-court appeal against the earlier ruling, issued by Justice Babar Sattar on Tuesday, which had ordered the PTA chief\u2019s removal over his \u201cillegal\u201d appointment to the position.<\/p>\n
In his order, on a plea filed by digital rights activist Usama Khilji in 2023, Justice Sattar had ruled that the creation of a post for Member (Administration) in the PTA, and the subsequent appointment of Rehman as PTA chairman, were \u201cunconstitutional, illegal and void ab initio\u201d.<\/p>\n
His decision had been challenged by Rehman within hours of it being announced.<\/p>\n
Today, Advocate Qasim Wadud appeared as the counsel for the PTA chairman, while Additional Attorney General (AAG) Salman Mansoor also presented his arguments.<\/p>\n
At the outset of the hearing, Mansoor contended that \u201crelief which was not even sought in the petition had been granted\u201d in Justice Sattar\u2019s order.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither were the rules challenged nor was a notice issued to the attorney general. Issuing a notice to the attorney general was necessary,\u201d he argued.<\/p>\n
The AAG further argued that a request not sought in a petition could not be considered under Article 199 (jurisdiction of high court) of the Constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court itself stated that the entire argument was not complete yet,\u201d Mansoor claimed.<\/p>\n
Addressing the PTA chairman\u2019s lawyer, Justice Asif remarked, \u201cYou were given enough opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wadud then came to the rostrum and said, \u201cIt was questioned in the writ petition that the appointment of PTA chairman could not be made [as] the vacancy was wrongly advertised.<\/p>\n
\u201c[But] the rules had been changed and the [federal] cabinet had given the approval, following which the appointment was made,\u201d he contended.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rules had been amended on March 25, [2023], after which the petition was filed,\u201d the counsel added.<\/p>\n
The court subsequently suspended the previous IHC ruling that ordered the immediate removal of the PTA chairman.<\/p>\n
Recruitment process \u2018suffered fr\u00adom malice in law\u2019
\nThe earlier judgement by Justice Sattar pointed out that the advertisement for the post, issued on March 28, 2023, had been published at a time when no such position legally existed. Later amendments to the PTA Appointment Rules in May 2023 were deemed insufficient to regularise the appointment process.<\/p>\n
Justice Sattar observed that the recruitment process \u201csuffered fr\u00adom malice in law\u201d and appeared to have been tailored to accommodate a specific individual. The prescription of a higher age limit of 61 years for the post, compared with 57 years for other members, was cit\u00aded as further proof of malafide intent.<\/p>\n
The court had further held that the appointment of the retired army officer as PTA chairman without a transparent and objective selection process was \u201cillegal, irrational and unsustainable in the eyes of law\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge had ordered that the senior-most serving PTA member would temporarily assume the charge of the office of PTA chairman till such time as the federal government appointed a regular chairman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Islamabad High Court (IHC) division bench on Thursday suspended an earlier order for the removal of retired Major-General Hafeezur Rehman from his post as the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority\u2019s (PTA) chairperson. The bench, comprising Justices Muhammad Asif and Inaam Ameen Minhas, had taken up Rehman\u2019s intra-court appeal against the earlier ruling, issued by Justice Babar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-and-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12042,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12040\/revisions\/12042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}