HARIPUR: The Peshawar High Court’s Abbottabad Bench on Tuesday stayed voting on the no-confidence motion against the district nazim of Haripur.

The stay order was issued by Justice Lal Jan Khattak of a single-member bench during a hearing into on a petition filed by nazim Adil Islam against the no-confidence motion.

The court granted an interim relief to the petitioner by barring the district council’s convener and secretary from holding voting on the no-confidence motion.

PHC calls councillors, officials over Adil Islam’s petition

It also served notices on the council convener, local government secretary, director, Haripur deputy commissioner, and nine Haripur district councillors, who had led 30 council members into signing the no-trust motion, to appear before it and respond to the petition.

The court also observed that if the nazim didn’t plead his case on July 9, the stay order would automatically stand vacated.

The petitioner has claimed that the district council’s June 28 meeting was illegal in light of Section 79(5) of the Local Government Act, 2013.

In that meeting, which had taken place after a break five months, the PTI members had complained about the long delay in the convening of the sitting and asked the nazim to clarify position on it. There followed heated exchanges between the nazim and councillors Riaz Danish, Sikandar Hayat and Taimoor Haider Shah.

The councillors later roped in 31 members of the 69-strong house to sign a no-confidence motion against the nazim and submitted it to the convener and local government deputy director.

Polling on the motion was slated to take place on Tuesday but it didn’t happen due to the stay order issued by the court.

Around 49 councillors had come to the district council to attend the session amid heavy deployment of police.

Meanwhile, PTI president of Hazara division Zar Gul Khan issued an order for the removal of district nazim Adil Islam as the district president of the PTI Youth Wing.

In the order, Mr Zar Gul claimed that Adil Islam had violated the party’s discipline by supporting an independent candidate against the party’s election candidate in PK-42 Haripur III.

He also removed all members of the PTI Youth Wing in Ghazi tehsil.

Mr Adil Islam was the first cousin of former PTI MPA from PK-42 Faisal Zaman, who was expelled from the party on the charge of selling vote in the recent Senate elections.

Though he denied the horse-trading charge on oath, the PTI leadership didn’t issue him an election ticket forcing Faisal Zaman to contest the election as an independent candidate.

The PTI has issued ticket to the little-known party activist, Saima Khalid, in the constituency.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2018