PESHAWAR, June 27: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday directed the provincial government to respond in writing to a petition, which challenged the ‘complicated’ procedure to grant domicile.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Asadullah Chamkani admitted the petition filed by senior lawyer Mohammad Essa Khan to full hearing and fixed the hearing for July 4.

The petitioner said in the past, one could get the domicile form for Rs10 from stationary or photocopier shops before attesting it from a gazetted officer, nazim of the relevant union council and the district revenue officer concerned, but the government changed the procedure making it very difficult for students and their parents to secure domicile certificates.

He said domicile forms were currently not available on the market and instead one had to visit the office of the deputy commissioner to get the form for Rs30.

The petitioner said the government had complicated the procedure to secure domicile certificates by involving several revenue officials for attestation.

He said the domicile form was first to be signed and attested by a patwari, then by a gardawar and then tehsildar before the relevant deputy commissioner signed it.

The petitioner said students had to give affidavits on stamp paper duly attested by notary public to undertake that he or she had not got any domicile earlier.

He said involvement of revenue officials in the domicile making process had no rationale and was not supported by any law.

The petitioner further said neither all aspirants of getting domicile certificate happened to hold any landed property nor was the ownership of a landed property essential for obtaining domicile certificate.

He requested the bench to declare the procedure for issuance of domicile certificate illegal.

During the hearing, the chief justice observed that instead of introducing such a difficult procedure for preparation of domicile certificate, the government should have attached it with the national identity card as Nadra was having computerised data.He said once the identity card was issued to a person after proper verification, there was no reason to introduce a difficult procedure for securing domicile certificate.