PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday put the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on notice, seeking its response to a petition of the opposition members of the provincial assembly against umbrella schemes in the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for 2024-25 by the provincial government.

A bench consisting of the Chief Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim and Justice Wiqar Ahmad issued the order after preliminary hearing of the petition wherein the opposition MPAs claimed that the act of the government was in violation of superior courts judgements.

Leader of the opposition in the assembly Ibadullah Khan, MPA Arbab Waseem Khan and 17 other opposition lawmakers have filed a joint petition requesting the high court to declare it as illegal and also set aside the schemes included in ADP under umbrella or block allocation.

They also prayed the court to strike down all directives issued by the chief minister regarding umbrella schemes after the passage of the 2024-25 annual budget.

Opposition MPAs call practice contrary to court judgements

The petitioners sought the court’s orders for the government to formulate, implement and distribute developmental schemes and release funds for them in line with the law, rules, guidelines, and superior court judgements.

They also requested the court to order authorities not to discriminate against them and sought interim relief in the form of the suspension of the chief minister’s orders for umbrella schemes until the petition was decided.

The petitioners belong to opposition parties, including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl, Pakistan Peoples Party-Parliamentarians, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-Parliamentarians and Awami National Party.

The respondents in the petition are the KP government through its chief secretary, chief minister, his principal secretary, additional chief secretary (planning and development), and the secretaries of finance, communication and works, irrigation, planning and development and public health engineering departments.

Lawyers Sultan Mohammad Khan and Babar Khan Yousafzai appeared for the petitioners and insisted that the “illegal” actions of the respondents clearly violated the Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Procedure and Conduct of Business Rules, 1988, and KP Government Rules of Business, 1985, as well as the policy guidelines issued by the government in consequence of a high court judgement.

They said that the chief minister under the name of ‘CM Directives’ was doling out public funds to his political favourites despite the fact that such practice of arbitrary one-man discretionary power had been declared consistently illegal by superior courts including PHC.

The counsel pointed out that a table had also been given in the petitioner wherein 15 of the umbrella schemes/block allocations have been mentioned related to upgradation and rehabilitation of roads, small drinking water supply schemes, construction of flood protection works, irrigation channels and installation of solar tubewells, district development plans for Peshawar, Charsadda, Mardan, Nowshera, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Upper and Lower Dir, Upper and Lower Chitral, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Hazara divisions.

They said the ADP for the year 2024-25 was presented and passed in the assembly by virtue of sheer and brute majority of the government in the province.

The lawyers contended that the respondents included several umbrella schemes in the ADP despite superior court judgments against them.

They said that umbrella schemes were distinguishable from the projects that were presented and approved with the required details and particularity, so they’re illegal.

The counsel said the respondents while trying to deceive and sidestep the law and superior court judgements were allocating new funds to old umbrella ADP schemes in the garb of the ongoing development schemes.

Published in Dawn, September 11th, 2024