PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court on Tuesday sought comments from federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments in a petition of Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement founder Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen and nine other leaders against a ban on their rights movement and the petitioners.

A bench consisting of Justice Syed Mohammad Attique Shah and Justice Sahibzada Asadullah was hearing the petition jointly filed by Manzoor Pashteen and nine others, requesting the court to declare illegal the ban on PTM under Section 11B of Anti-Terrorism Act and the petitioners under Section 11-EE.

The petitioners have sought court’s orders for federal government to remove PTM from the list of banned outfits in First Schedule of ATA and their names from the ATA’s Fourth Schedule.

Manzoor Pashteen, nine others want their names removed from Fourth Schedule

They also requested the court to declare that sections 11-B and 11-EE, amended through Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Act, 2014, were in conflict with Article 10-A of the Constitution that guaranteed the right to fair trial and due process of law.

The petitioners sought orders for Section 11-D of the law, which deals with keeping of an organisation under observation, to be read as a mandatory precursor to proscription under Section 11-B.

The respondents in the petition include federal government through interior secretary, provincial government through its chief secretary, inspector general of police, additional chief secretary (home and tribal affairs), and Peshawar’s chief capital city police officer.

During course of hearing, Justice Attique Shah asked KP Assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swathi and former speaker of National Assembly Asad Qaiser, who were also present in the court, that they had held a jirga with the PTM leaders, what had happened to that.

The bench observed that the PTM members were also sons of the soil like them. It was added that by holding the jirga, they had taken a good step and they should resolve the matter related to PTM. The bench observed that the area had been in turmoil for last four decades.

The bench said that it was responsibility of all the stakeholders to play their role for the youth of the province. It regretted that youth were the future of the province but they were indulging in drug abuse in universities.

Babar Saleem said that they had held a fruitful jirga with the members of Pashtun National Jirga and that jirga had still been intact. He added that they also wanted to resolve the issue amicably.

Asad Qaiser also stated that they had made legislation to check the growing use of ice (crystal meth) among youth.

The bench observed that apart from legislation, they should create opportunities for youth. The bench wondered that IT University had been set up in Punjab, but what the government was doing in KP.

The counsel for petitioners, Attaullah Kundi, said that PTM was a civil and non-violent social movement that had been advocating for the rights of Pakhtuns since its formation in 2014.

He added that unlike violent or militant movements in the region, PTM had drawn inspiration from non-violence advocate Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and consistently stood against violence.

He said that PTM recently organised Pashtun National Jirga from Oct 11 to Oct 13 in Khyber tribal district to provide a platform to Pakhtuns to demand ‘justice and accountability’.

He said that to the utter shock of his clients, federal government issued the impugned notification on Oct 6 to ban PTM, while the petitioners and several other leaders of the organisation were ‘proscribed’ under Section 11-EE with their names placed in Fourth Schedule of ATA.

The lawyer argued that a 2014 amendment to ATA empowered government to ban an organisation on ex parte basis without providing an opportunity of hearing to it, but that provision was unconstitutional and against the principle of natural justice.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2024