SC rejects Army Housing Dte’s plea as inadmissible

ISLAMABAD (NNI): The Supreme Court of Pakistan Wednesday threw out the petition filed by the Army Housing Directorate against the Sindh High Court’s (SHC) order of stopping construction of a multi-storey building in Askari-IV, Karachi, saying it was inadmissible for hearing.
A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Qazi Faez Isa, heard the directorate’s petition. Raising objections to the petition, the SC asked as to what was the legal status of the directorate. “Is anywhere in the constitution, Rules of Business 1983, or in any other law there is any information about the subject?” the CJP asked. He said that since the directorate had no legal status, it could not file a petition. “The directorate is neither a corporation nor a welfare organization,” he remarked.
When, he went on to say, neither the law nor the constitution recognized it, then how could it file a plea?
“If the directorate is an aggrieved party, it can file the petition, and that too through the federal government,” CJP Isa said, adding, “In this case, the directorate has made the federal government and others respondents.”
He wondered whether in this case the federal government had filed the petition against itself.
Speaking on the occasion, Advocate Abid Zuberi said it was the presidential order of 1982 under which the Directorate was established. The chief justice asked Zuberi where in the order reference had been made to the constitution. “Read article 245, and tell us what does it say?” Justice Athar Minallah asked Zuberi.
Reading out the article, the lawyer said that under it the armed forces, on the order of the federal government, were bound to defend the country from aggression. Justice Minallah remarked this showed that the armed forces had no other business except what was laid down in the article. CJP Isa asked Zuberi being a senior lawyer, how he deemed it appropriate to defend an organization, which did not have any constitutional status.