ISLAMABAD- Justice Munir A. Sheikh, senior puisne judge of the Supreme Court (SC), set aside on Tuesday the order of the court’s registrar who had returned the petition of the All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS), questioning the validity of the Newspaper Employees Conditions of Service Act and the Seventh Wage Board Award.

The APNS had challenged the decision of the registrar, which was fixed before a judge in his chambers. Justice Sheikh, after hearing Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, counsel for the APNS, set aside the registrar’s order.

The original jurisdiction of the apex court for the APNS petition, filed under Article 184(3), would now be fixed for hearing before a bench. No date has yet been fixed for the hearing of the case.

Pirzada, after coming out from the chambers of Justice Munir, informed the journalists that the order of the registrar had been set aside and the petition would now be fixed for hearing before a bench.

The counsel said he had cited a number of cases in which the Supreme Court had admitted the petitions under its direct jurisdiction. He said he had cited more than a dozen cases in support of his contention that the matter could be decided under Article 184(3) of the Constitution.

The judge had noted the Shahida Abbasi case in which the detention of her husband, who had been charged with making attempts to overthrow the elected government, was challenged; and the Javed Jabbar case in which he had challenged the award of licences for TV channels on the ground that airwaves were a national asset and its distribution could not be discriminatory.

The counsel said his emphasis, during the course of hearing of the petition, would be the question if the classification of other employees of newspaper establishments in the same category as the working journalists was reasonable.

He said the Newspaper Employees Conditions of Service Act 1973 under which the Wage Board was constituted was, perhaps, the only law against which no remedy was available.

There were, he went on to say, at least four important cases decided by the apex court that one’s right of appeal was mandatory.

The registrar, while refusing to entertain the APNS petition, had pointed out that the issue raised in the constitutional petition did not fall in the preview of Article 184(3) under which only such issues could be raised as were of public importance.

The present petition, the SC official had said, related to the grievance of a section of the society. The office relied on the latest judgment of the SC on the issue, Syed Zulfikar Mehdi versus PIA, decided by Justice Saiduzzaman Siddiqui.

The APNS had challenged the Newspaper Employees Conditions of Service Act 1973 and the Seventh Wage Board Award on the grounds that they were violative of their fundamental rights.
Source: Dawn
Date:7/17/2002