ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad administration is running on stay orders as the city managers are working on their respective posts due to stay orders issued by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) suspending the judgements of a single-judge bench that had rendered the capital administration ‘dysfunctional’.

The stay orders were issued in response to the judgements issued by Justice Babar Sattar who had declared the framework to govern the capital city ultra vires – a move that made the offices of the Registrar Cooperative Societies, Board of Revenue, and Labour Department dormant. In another judgement, Justice Sattar convicted the Islamabad deputy commissioner and SSP operations for contempt.

However, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb suspended the sentence awarded to DC Irfan Nawaz Memon and SSP Malik Jameel Zafar on March 20, 2024. The case was again fixed for hearing on May 7, but it was cancelled by the order of the IHC chief justice. It has not been scheduled for a hearing so far.

Justice Babar Sattar had sentenced DC Memon to six-month imprisonment, SSP Zafar to four months, and SHO Margalla to two months imprisonment for flouting the court orders related to the release of PTI leader Sheharyar Afridi. The single-member bench had suspended the sentence for a month, to enable the officers to file an appeal before the division bench.

In the verdict, Justice Sattar observed that “between May 9 and Nov 2, 2023, DC Irfan Memon issued some 69 detention orders in exercise of power under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO)”.

According to senior lawyer Shah Khawar, the appeal could be fixed on its turn.

He said that since it was a conviction, the registrar’s office might have queued it with the other appeals.

Commissioner’s powers

The judgement that stripped the chief commissioner of his powers was also suspended by a two-member bench comprising CJ Farooq and Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri.

In an 83-page judgement in January this year, Justice Sattar had declared “PO [presidential order] No. 18 of 1980, PO No. 2 of 1987, PO No. 2 of 1990 and notifications…declaring the administrator or chief commissioner Islamabad to be the provincial government for purposes of ICT are ultra vires of the Constitution and therefore declared to be void”.

Presidential Order 18 of 1980 “conferred executive authority of the federation to an administrator for the Islamabad Capital Territory, later designated as a chief commissioner Islamabad”.

Presidential Order No. 2 of 1987 provided that the president may, at any time, by order in writing direct that the executive authority of the federation in respect of ‘Islamabad Capital Territory’, in so far as it relates to any matter specified in the order, shall be exercised by such authority and the chief commissioner was designated to govern the federal capital.

It may be noted that before 1980, Islamabad was governed through a naib-tehsildar of the Punjab government, and the order of 1980 introduced the concept of a provincial government but without any chosen representatives.

The judgement authored by Justice Sattar asked the federal government to govern Islamabad till the rules to operate the provincial government were finalised. The court also set a three-month deadline to frame the rules. However, the rules could not be framed even after a lapse of nine months.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2024