KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday adjourned the hearing of a petition, seeking ban on Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) due to the absence of its counsel Senator Farogh Naseem.
The SHC bench, headed by Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, was hearing the constitutional petition filed by Moulvi Iqbal Haider, a practicing lawyer and a chairman of Awami Himayat Tehreek Pakistan, asking for banning the MQM-P on alleged charges of terrorism.
When the bench commenced the hearing, it was informed Farogh Naseem, who was defending MQM-P, was not able to appear due to illness.
The court adjourned the hearing to a date to be announced later. Earlier, Haider petitioned the high court and submitted that the MQM founder had delivered anti-Pakistan speech during a hunger strike on August 22, 2016 but the legislators of the party had not raised agitation against their founder.
Instead of expressing anxiety on founder's statements, the other leaders of the party just disassociated themselves from his vitriolic speech just for the sake of their own skin, Haider added. He contended that MQM's legislators had no right to keep parliamentarians' offices as they got votes on the name of their founder who was involved in anti-state activities.
He requested the court to pass the directives of prosecuting the MQM's parliamentarians under Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 and Article 6 of the Constitution of Pakistan.
In the reply, MQM-P Convener Dr. Farooq Sattar told SHC that the party had separated its ways with its founding leader after his anti-Pakistan speech delivered on 22nd August 2016.
Sattar on behalf of many parliamentarians of his party had submitted in his counter affidavit that after Altaf's anti-Pakistan slogans, which they do not even want to repeat in their reply, they had disassociated themselves from him and took veto power from Altaf which was available for him under the constitution of the party.
While rejecting the petitioner's claim, Sattar submitted that it was totally incorrect that MQM-P had separated its ways with its founding leader just to save its own skin.
We were not elected on the ideology of Altaf but on nationalistic ideology.
MQM-P is patriotic political party; therefore any one including the petitioner, who seeks ban on it on the same line as the National Awami Party was banned in the past, is not sincere to Pakistan.
Any attempt to ban MQM -P will amount to disenfranchising the voters of Urban Sindh, Sattar added in his reply.
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