SHC moved for ban on MQM, disqualification of legislators

Karachi

A petition was filed in the Sindh High Court on Tuesday, seeking a ban on the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the disqualification of its legislators over an anti-state speech made by the party’s founder, Altaf Hussain, at a hunger strike camp on August 22.

Moulvi Iqbal Haider submitted in his petition that MQM MNAs and MPAs heard the anti-state speech at the hunger strike camp outside the Karachi Press Club in which Hussain uttered highly objectionable remarks against the solidarity, integrity and security of the country by phone from London.

He said the MQM legislators had neither agitated nor raised any slogans against their party’s founder; however, for sake of saving their own skin they disassociated themselves from the speech.

Haider submitted that the federation of Pakistan was duty- bound to issue a notification for banning the MQM in terms of articles 5, 5 and 17(2) of the constitution as its legislators got votes on the kite symbol in the name of Hussain, who nominated them to contest the elections of the Senate, national and provincial assemblies. 

He maintained that after the vitriolic speech, all MQM parliamentarians had no right to keep their parliamentarian office in any manner and they all were required to be prosecuted in terms of 11-F of the Anti- Terrorism Act read with Article 6 of the constitution. 

He said that the federal and provincial governments were not taking action, but the law did not permit them to remain silent.

It was submitted that it was a requirement of the law in terms of the Supreme Court judgment in the Abdul Wali Khan case that the MQM and its elected members of parliament be disqualified and their seats declared vacant by the election commission after taking necessary action.