PESHAWAR: A senior lawyer associated with the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl on Thursday moved the Peshawar High Court seeking orders for the government against creating hurdles on main highways in the province to the party’s Azadi March on Islamabad.

Obaidullah Azhar, the convener of the Jamiat Lawyers Forum, filed the petition requesting the court to stop the government from placing shipping containers and other hurdles on roads as such steps are meant to deny the people their fundamental right of free movement.

The petition filed through lawyer Farooq Khan said the right of staging Azadi March was exercised in all civilised political societies, where no hurdles were created for such protests by the state functionaries, but the current government was bent on creating hurdles in an unprecedented manner to stop the JUI-F’s march on Islamabad by using force.

JUI-F lawyer insists govt to deny people free movement by placing shipping containers on roads

The respondents in the petition are the KP government through its chief secretary, secretaries of home and administration departments, commissioners of Peshawar, Kohat, Malakand and Hazara divisions, and deputy commissioners of Peshawar, Nowshera, Kohat, Karak, Lakki Marwat and DI Khan.

The petitioner said the JUI-F along with other opposition parties rejected the ‘rigged’ election of 2018, so it had planned to march on Islamabad against it.

He said the same right was exercised by current Prime Minister Imran Khan against ex-premier Nawaz Sharif for 126 days but the former government didn’t create any hurdle to the protest and it rather provided an amicable environment to it.

The petitioner claimed that after the announcement of the Azadi March, the provincial government began placing shipping containers on main routes to stop people from marching on Islamabad.

He said the JUI-F consisted of religious scholars and people, who were peaceful and had never acted like anarchists and that it had organised peaceful ‘Million Marches’ in KP and other provinces.

DENGUE CASE: A Peshawar High Court bench was informed on Thursday that 6,048 people had so far tested positive for dengue in the province but the disease claimed no life.

Director general (health services) Dr Mohammad Arshad told Justice Qaiser Rasheed and Justice Ahmad Ali that 2,400 patients were diagnosed with dengue fever in Peshawar.

He said all health facilities overseen by his directorate had been conducting free tests of suspected dengue patients and that he didn’t control the medical teaching institutions of the province.

The bench was hearing petitions filed by lawyers Saifullah Muhib Kakakhel and Shah Faisal Ilyas, who requested the court to direct the respondents, including provincial government, health and local government secretaries and Peshawar deputy commissioner to take immediate steps to eradicate dengue virus in Peshawar.

They requested the court to order the government to take both preventive and curative measures against dengue.

Director of Khyber Teaching Hospital Dr Farmanullah said the hospital had been carrying out free dengue tests.

Director of Lady Reading Hospital Dr Khalid Masood said the hospital had procured 8,000 testing kits for dengue but the influx of patients had caused the shortage of kits.

Chief executive of the KP Health Care Commission Azar Sardar said the commission had closed down 527 laboratories for not following the rules, while 1,229 laboratories were sealed.

He added that Rs43 million fines were imposed, whereas FIRs had been registered in 22 cases.

Justice Qaiser Rasheed observed that the performance of LRH, which was the largest hospital in the province, was not up to the mark in the ongoing dengue crisis and that reports suggested that the hospital was short of kits for dengue test.

The bench observed that after the government declared the hospital an MTI, its performance had deteriorated.

The bench fixed Oct 31 for the next hearing into the case asking all relevant officials to produce their respective progress reports on the matter.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2019