The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government and Peshawar High Court Bar Association (PHCBA) rejected and heavily criticised the Lahore High Court (LHC) ruling on the construction of the Kalabagh dam and demanded that the Supreme Court overrule the decision through a suo moto action.
“We do respect an independent judiciary but judges must distance themselves from giving verdicts on controversial issues,” remarked KP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain in a news conference on Saturday. Shortly before the conference, PHCBA called an emergency meeting presided by Latif Afridi, rejecting the LHC ruling through a unanimous resolution. Representing the KP government’s stance, Hussain pointed out three provincial assemblies, those of KP, Balochistan and Sindh, that had passed resolutions against the construction of the dam. He questioned as to how a Judge of the LHC could justify a project which had been declared controversial by elected prime ministers including former PM Nawaz sharif and the incumbent Raja Pervez Ashraf.
“If powerful dictators like Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf could not make it happen, how could anyone else be in a position to do that?” He said the issue was not a technical or political one but was a matter of life and death for Pashtuns. He urged the judiciary to detach itself from controversial matters and demanded Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Chaudhry Iftikhar to exercise his suo moto powers to the put the issue to rest. Peshawar High Court Bar Association, while rejecting the LHC decision, stated that the court did not have the jurisdiction to rule on the matter which threatened the federation by creating rift amongst the federating units.