PHC extends bar on oath-taking of reserved seats MNAs till March 13

By: Inter News on March 07, 2024 / comment : 0 NEWS, The Dawn News - Home

The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Thursday extended the bar on the oath-taking of the beneficiaries allotted National Assembly reserved seats until March 13.

The order was issued on a petition filed by the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) — which was joined by PTI-backed independents who won the elections sans their electoral symbol — challenging the Election Commission of Pakistan’s decision to reject the party allocation of reserved women and minority seats.

In a 4-1 verdict earlier this week, the electoral watchdog ruled that the SIC was not entitled to claim quota for reserved seats “due to having non curable legal defects and violation of a mandatory provision of submission of party list for reserved seats which is the requirement of law”.

The commission had also decided to distribute the seats among other parliamentary parties, with the PML-N and the PPP becoming major beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the verdict was rejected by the PTI as unconstitutional and the party vowed to challenge it.

During a preliminary hearing on Wednesday, a two-member bench of the PHC had barred the oath-taking of the MNAs allotted the reserved seats. It issued a pre-admission to the ECP and all the respondents in the case, listing six questions that needed to be determined.

The court further referred the matter to the PHC chief justice for the constitution of a larger bench to “adjudicate upon the intricate constitutional questions involved in the matter”.

Today, a five-member larger bench led by Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim took up the petition. Justices Ijaz Anwar, S.M. Attique Shah, Shakeel Ahmed and Syed Arshad Ali were also part of the bench.

The petitioners’ counsels — including PTI lawyer Qazi Anwar — and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Additional Attorney General Sanaullah as well as the lawyers of other respondents appeared before the court.

However, due to Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Usman Awan failing to appear today, the stay order issued yesterday was extended until March 13.

The hearing

At the outset of the hearing, AAG Sanaullah informed the court that AGP Awan was occupied with cases in the Supreme Court and sought more time.

Justice Ibrahim recalled that the court had summoned the AGP, at which Anwar said that a new AGP would be appointed today, who would then appear before the PHC.

Here, PPP counsel Advocate Qazi Jawwad said that the presidential elections were scheduled for March 9 (Saturday).

PTI’s Babar Awan, who was also representing the petitioner, then noted: “The presidential election is taking place and the party with 93 seats has not been allotted reserved seats.

“[A party] who has a single assembly member in a province has been allotted two reserved seats,” he stated, adding that the ECP “gifted” reserved seats to other parties.

AAG Jawwad then argued that the PHC could only issue a verdict once the case proceedings were complete. He urged that the court modify the interim order, adding that “women who have been elected also have a right”.

Here, Justice Ibrahim ordered that AGP Awan appear before the court in the next hearing, extending the stay order on the swearing-in of the beneficiaries of reserved seats till March 13, when the hearing will be resumed.

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Firing in jubilation during Basant damaged PAF’s VVIP aircraft

By: Inter News on March 07, 2024 / comment : 0 NEWS, The Dawn News - Home

RAWALPINDI: Stray bullets damaged a VVIP aircraft of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and two transport aircraft on Feb 24, the day Basant was celebrated, and in the first month of this year, respectively.

The two transport aircraft damaged by the bullets have been rendered unusable.

Besides, the main runway and taxiway were littered with a large number of bullets during the unannounced Basant while a number of unaccountable bullets fell on sides of the runway.

Expressing concern over the damage caused to the aircraft, the authorities concerned intimated the city police officer, deputy commissioner, director sanitisation of the Capital Development Authority (CDA), Executive Officer Cantonment Board and Rawalpindi Waste Management Company managing director to take appropriate measures to check firing in jubilation, kite and pigeon flying as well as pigeon homing in the surrounding areas of the Nur Khan Airfield.

Nur Khan Airbase authorities seek ban on firing in air, pigeon and kite flying within vicinity

The PAF authorities informed relevant officials during a top-level meeting held recently that an airfield was frequently being used round the clock by a number of VVIPs, VIPs, dignitaries and state guests, and that they have very limited resources to deal with these hazards and needed support of the district administration and police.

They also cited two incidents in which planes, including a PAF VVIP aircraft, were damaged after being hit by stray bullets.

Two transport aircraft were damaged as they were made unserviceable after stray bullets hit them on Jan 18 and 23 while a VVIP aircraft was damaged after being hit by stray bullets on the afternoon of Feb 24 when people were celebrating Basant in the garrison city.

The authorities also noted that the main runway and taxiways alone received significant number of bullets in one day during the unannounced Basant in Rawalpindi as the cases of firing in the air were on the rise. Besides, a number of bullets that fell on sides of the runway remained unaccountable.

They requested the administration to prioritise clearance of fly past route from Rawat and Sihala to Shakarparian Parade Ground of birds, bird attractants, animal, dairy farms, garbage dumps, butchery wastes, and any other source of birds’ attraction or flight safety hazards.

The authorities also asked the police and district administration to impose a complete ban on firing in the air within the 3km radius around the Nur Khan Airfield and to declare the area a ‘no weapon zone’.

They also asked the local administration and police to removal pigeon cages from Rawal Road, Khurram Colony, Muslim Town, Dhoke Gangal and Dhoke Laliyal.

Since February, at least seven incidents of firing in the air were reported in which aircraft were damaged and a PAF civilian woman was injured.

The security of Nur Khan Airbase and fly past route was the responsibility of the civil administration of Rawalpindi Division and city police.

The PAF authorities have brought to the notice of the district administration and police several times, even prior to the recent Basant through several interactions, district level representations and numerous correspondences on the subject of banning firing in the air and Basant in Rawalpindi, but all efforts proved unproductive.

Following the complaint, as per practice, the deputy commissioner has directed the city police officer and the latter has directed the SP and SDPO concerned to take action and report to him.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2024

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Modi to visit India-occupied Kashmir, first time since special status revoked

By: Inter News on March 07, 2024 / comment : 0 NEWS, The Dawn News - Home

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to hold a rally in the main city of India-held Kashmir on Thursday, on his first visit since the disputed region’s semi-autonomy was cancelled in 2019.

Modi’s government stripped the Muslim-majority disputed territory of its special constitutional status, splitting the former state into two territories directly ruled from New Delhi.

The move, widely welcomed across India, angered many in the densely militarised territory.

Thousands of armed police and paramilitary forces were deployed, and new checkpoints were set up across India-held Kashmir’s main city Srinagar, where the Hindu nationalist leader is scheduled to address a public gathering around midday.

“Various development works will also be dedicated to the nation,” Modi said in a statement on social media platform X ahead of the visit, including programmes “boosting the agro-economy” as well as tourism.

A government statement said Modi will also inaugurate infrastructure around the revered Muslim shrine of Hazratbal.

The visit comes ahead of India’s national elections due by May, the first since the region lost its autonomy. The last local elections in Kashmir were held in 2014.

Modi’s government claims New Delhi’s direct rule of India-held Kashmir brought about a new era of “peace and development” in the region, but critics and many residents say it heralded a drastic curtailment of civil liberties and press freedom.

Security forces on Thursday patrolled the streets, as well as in motorboats along the river that runs through Srinagar.

Most schools in the city are shut for the day, and the authorities have called on government employees to attend the rally.

Omar Abdulla, a former chief minister of occupied Jammu and Kashmir, accused the government of organising buses to bring in crowds to attend the rally, alleging that “almost none” would be attending willingly.

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Oil up as OPEC+ cuts override China, US demand concerns

By: Inter News on March 06, 2024 / comment : 0 NEWS, The Dawn News - Home

Oil prices rebounded slightly on Wednesday after four days of declines as signs of supply tightness amid output cuts by major producers overrode demand concerns in China and the US, the world’s two biggest crude consumers.

Brent crude futures were up 53 cents, or 0.65 per cent, to $82.57 a barrel at 0922 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 64 cents, or 0.82pc, to $78.79 a barrel, after declining the past two days.

China’s 2024 economic growth target of around 5pc set on Tuesday lacked big-ticket stimulus plans to bolster its struggling economy, raising concerns of sluggish oil demand growth.

The market “specifically was hoping to see further fiscal expansion to help meet the growth target,” said Tony Sycamore, an analyst at IG in Sydney.

Eyes are now on US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s semi-annual monetary policy testimony to Congress on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday’s US employment data, Sycamore said.

Friday’s US non-farm payrolls data is expected to show an increase of 200,000 jobs in February after surging 353,000 in January, according to a Reuters survey of economists.

Powell’s comments and the jobs data could provide clearer direction on US interest rates, and signs of a Fed cut would be seen as positive for the economy and oil demand.

Oil prices were lifted by the announcement on Sunday that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) extended output cuts of 2.2 million barrels per day until the end of the second quarter.

The extension has created some supply tightness, particularly in Asian markets, along with the disruption in oil tanker movements as a result of the Red Sea attacks by the Houthi militia in Yemen that is tying up barrels in transit.

That physical tightness was apparent as Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, announced on Wednesday slightly higher prices for April crude sales to Asia, its biggest market.

The first of this week’s two US inventory reports, from the American Petroleum Institute industry group, showed US crude stocks rose by 423,00 barrels in the week ended March 1, market sources said, much smaller than the increase of 2.1 million barrels, expected by analysts in a Reuters poll.

Official data from the US Energy Information Administration is due on Wednesday at 10:30 am, ET (1530 GMT).

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CM Gandapur picks 20-member cabinet for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

By: Inter News on March 06, 2024 / comment : 0 NEWS, The Dawn News - Home

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur has picked his new cabinet comprising 15 ministers and five advisers.

A summary regarding the appointment of the provincial cabinet — a copy of which is available with Dawn.com — was sent to KP Governor Haji Ghulam Ali today.

The summary was subsequently approved and the appointment of the ministers was notified. Cabinet members are likely to be sworn in later in the evening.

The ministers-designate include Arshad Ayub Khan, Shakeel Ahmad, Fazal Hakim Khan, Muhammad Adnan Qadri, Aqibullah Khan, Muhammad Sajjad, Meena Khan, Fazal Shakoor, Nazir Ahmad Abbasi, Pakhtoon Yar Khan, Aftab Alam Khan Afridi, Khaleequr Rehman, Syed Qasim Ali Shah, Faisal Khan Tarakai and Muhammad Zahir Shah.

Syed Fakhar Jehan, Muzamil Aslam, Muhammad Ali Saif, Mashal Azam and Zahid Chanzeb were selected as advisers to the chief minister.

The development comes a day after CM Gandapur met incarcerated PTI founder Imran Khan at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi and discussed the formation of the provincial cabinet with him.

“Mr Gandapur met incarcerated leader Imran Khan and during the meeting, along with other issues, names of the provincial cabinet members were also discussed,” PTI spokesperson Raoof Hasan had told Dawn.

On the other hand, while speaking to the media after he met with Imran, Gandapur had said the PTI would never reconcile with the Shehbaz Sharif-led PML-N government which he claimed was formed by “stealing seats”.

However, he added, a working relationship with the federal government would be maintained.

PTI-backed independents, who have found their new home in the Sunni Ittehad Council, made a landslide victory in KP by clinching over 85 of the 115 general seats in the provincial assembly.

Last week, around 115 MPAs were administered oath in the maiden session of the KP Assembly. It should be mentioned that the previous assembly was dissolved in January 2023 and KP had been functioning in the absence of the provincial legislature for more than 13 months.

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OpenAI rejects Musk’s accusations of ‘betrayal’

By: Inter News on March 06, 2024 / comment : 0 NEWS, The Dawn News - Home

OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, on Tuesday denied Elon Musk’s accusations of “betrayal” of its original mission and said it would push to have them dismissed in court.

The boss of Tesla, SpaceX and X was one of the co-founders of OpenAI in 2015 along with Sam Altman but left the organization in 2018 and is now one of its most vocal critics.

Musk launched a legal case against OpenAI last week, arguing in documents filed in a San Francisco court that the firm was always intended as a nonprofit entity.

“We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims,” OpenAI and its executives said in a blog post.

OpenAI captured the public imagination in late 2022 with the release of its chatbot ChatGPT, which can generate poems and essays and even succeed in exams.

The firm started as a non-profit dedicated to developing “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), a term loosely defined as a kind of AI that would outstrip human capabilities on all measures of intelligence.

The aim was for OpenAI to guarantee that such technology would be safe for humanity. OpenAI has received about $13 billion in investment from Microsoft in recent years, and both companies market AI services to developers and individuals.

On Tuesday, Altman and other executives from the Silicon Valley start-up detailed their counter-arguments, with supporting emails.

“We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired — someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him,” they said in a blog post.

In 2017, “we all understood we were going to need a lot more capital to succeed at our mission — billions of dollars per year, which was far more than any of us, especially Elon, thought we’d be able to raise as the non-profit”, they said.

The following year, Musk suggested in an email that OpenAI be attached “to Tesla as its cash cow”.

But in the face of refusal from the team, Musk “soon chose to leave OpenAI, saying that our probability of success was 0,” adding he planned to build an AGI competitor within Tesla.

“When he left in late February 2018, he told our team he was supportive of us finding our own path to raising billions of dollars,” said the OpenAI blog post.

Altman and his colleagues also said that their company is providing free AI access to organizations and countries, including Albania, which “is using OpenAI’s tools to accelerate its EU accession by as much as 5.5 years.”

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SC says conditions of ‘fair trial, due process’ not met in Zulfikar Bhutto’s trial

By: Inter News on March 06, 2024 / comment : 0 NEWS, The Dawn News - Home

The Supreme Court on Wednesday observed that the trial under the 1979 judgment that sent former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to the gallows did not meet the requirements of a “fair trial and due process”.

Headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa, a nine-judge bench announced its much-anticipated opinion on the long-pending presidential reference to answer whe­ther it can revisit its verdict, that PPP and jurists regard as a historic wrong.

The proceedings were broadcast live on the Supreme Court’s website and YouTube channel.

The reference filed in April 2011 on behalf of former president Asif Ali Zardari sought an opinion under the Supreme Court’s advisory jurisdiction on revisiting the death sentence awarded to the PPP founder.

Announcing the unanimous opinion today, CJP Isa said, “The proceedings of the trial by the Lahore High Court and of the appeal by the Supreme Court of Pakistan do not meet the requirements of the fundamental right to a fair trial and due process enshrined in Articles 4 and 9 of the Constitution, and later guaranteed as a separate and fundamental right under Article 10A of the Constitution.”

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The SC acknowledged that there had been “some cases in our judicial history that created a public perception that either fear or favour deterred the performance of a duty to administer justice in accordance with the law”.

“We must therefore be willing to confront our past missteps and fallibilities with humility, in the spirit of self-accountability, and as a testament to our commitment to ensure that justice must be served with unwavering integrity and fidelity to the law,” Justice Isa said.

“We cannot correct ourselves and progress in the right direction until we acknowledge our past mistakes,” he added.

The CJP stated that the SC was empowered to render an opinion on any “question of law” of public importance under Article 186 of the Constitution.

While the apex court voiced its opinion, it ruled that the verdict of Bhutto’s death sentence could not be changed as the Constitution and law did not allow so, and it would be maintained as a verdict. A detailed opinion will be issued later by the SC.

As the opinion was read out, the late Bhutto’s grandson, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari — clad in a black shalwar kameez and dark blue jacket — solemnly stood alongside his lawyer Farooq H. Naek and Raza Rabbani, and could be seen wiping his face with a handkerchief.

He later emerged from the courtroom with sunglasses on and briefly spoke to reporters. The PPP chairman called the court’s decision “historic”, adding that they were awaiting the detailed verdict.

He hoped that, 44 years later, the SC’s decision would allow Pakistan to progress, and that the “system” would finally be put on the right path.

“The stain of this decision made it difficult for the people of Pakistan to have faith in the court, and get justice from this court, especially if someone like the prime minister did not get justice,” Bilawal said. He thanked the judges and amici curiae for hearing and fighting the case.

Case history

In March 1979, nearly two years after the Bhutto’s government’s ouster by the then military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq, a seven-judge SC bench, in a split four-three verdict, upheld the Lahore High Court’s verdict awarding death sentence to the former premier.

During the closing of the reference hearing on Monday, CJP Isa had observed that the court would announce a short order on the reference in a couple of days after consultation since one of the bench members, Justice Sardar Tariq Masood, is retiring soon.

Ahmed Raza Qasuri, on whose complaint the murder case was registered against former PM Bhutto, pointed out that the court had not crossed the hurdle of admissibility of the reference and feared that any opinion by the apex court would open up the floodgates of references inundating the court with a tsunami of cases like the Jan 13 denial of ‘bat’ symbol to the PTI.

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More to follow

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