Court seeks Centre’s reply on Shehbaz’s contempt plea

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Wednesday directed a federal government law officer to submit a written reply to a civil miscellaneous application of Leader of Opposition in National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif seeking implementation of a court order that gave him a one-time permission to go abroad for medical treatment.

Earlier, Deputy Attorney General Rana Abdul Shakoor Khan questioned the maintainability of the application, saying no contempt of the court’s order was committed by barring Mr Shehbaz from traveling abroad. He said the petitioner had not followed the procedure for the implementation of the order and straightaway reached Lahore airport.

Advocate Azam Nazir Tarar, on behalf of Mr Shehbaz, argued the application was maintainable as it pertained to the enforcement of the court’s order.

Justice Ali Baqar Najafi asked the counsel whether the application was still maintainable since the federal government challenged the order before the Supreme Court and also placed the petitioner on the Exit Control List (ECL).

Shehbaz’s counsel relied that the court would have a clear picture of the case after a reply from the government was filed.

The judge instructed the law officer to submit a written reply to the application by May 26.

The judge had on May 7 permitted Shehbaz to visit the United Kingdom one-time for his medical treatment and observed that he would not be stopped from going abroad for being placed on a blacklist.

However, the immigration officials at the Lahore airport stopped Mr Shehbaz from boarding a reserved flight on the pretext that his name was also included in the Provincial National Identification List (PNIL), another category of no-fly list, which was not updated yet.

Shehbaz initially filed a contempt of court petition against the officials of the interior ministry and immigration staff. However, the LHC registrar office did not entertain the plea, saying the contempt petitions did not fall in the categories of the cases permitted to be instituted during the enforcement of Covid-19 related SOPs.

Therefore, Shehbaz’s legal team moved the civil miscellaneous application, urging the court to get its May 7 order implemented.

The application pleads that the excuse for not permitting the petitioner to proceed abroad was lame and false because a mechanism to update Integrated Border Management System (IBMS), placing or removing names in the stop lists functions round the clock. It argues that the respondents with mala fide intention deliberately disobeyed and defied the court’s order.