Islamabad:
The Supreme Court’s constitutional bench would take a petition filed by Pakistan Tehreek-E-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan against the changes to the official Secrets Act (OSA) and the Army Act on February 7, according to the Apex Court on Friday.
A constitutional bench of six members, led by Justice Aminuddin Khan, will hear the petition, filed by Imran under Klaus 3 of Article 184 of the Constitution in September 2023 through his lawyer, advocates the Shoaib Shaheen.
The petition made the president, the Federation and the National Assembly Parties. It requested the Supreme Court to declare the law to amend official secrets and the law of army amendment as invalid and suspend and suspend these actions until the final decision in the petition.
The PTI founder took the plea that the president had clarified on social media that he did not approve both of these laws. The petition also stated that it would be constitutionally giving the agencies’ power under OSA to enter and seek any house without a justification,
Separately, Imran complained to the Pointed Court on Thursday that none of the several petitions filed by him and his party regarding human rights and electoral law violations had been taken up in the last 18 months.
In a letter addressed to Chief Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Aminuddin Khan, the PTI founder also threw the government to adopt laws to specifically target his party, according to an Express News report.
In his letter, Imran criticized the judiciary for not giving justice despite repeated petitions against electoral fraud and the ongoing human rights violations in the last 18 months. He claimed that 10,000 PTI supporters were arrested between 24 and 27 November last year in junk cases.
He claimed that PTI workers were subjected to forced disappearance, injuries and extracurricular murder, especially around November 26, 2024. The letter claimed that even hospital registers were sealed to manipulate facts.
The PTI founder enclosed a list of 42 party workers with the letter he claimed was wounded or killed during the crash in Islamabad on November 26, aimed at spreading protesters from the capital’s red zone. In addition, he also built 75 people whom he claimed had disappeared.
In the letter, the PTI founder also claimed that he was held in “lonely inclusion” from 3 to 25 October 2024 and exposed to “degrading treatment”. He also said that his meetings with his family and the legal team were banned under the pretext of security.
Imran said that several of his party leaders, including Mahmudur Rashid, Ijaz Chaudhry, Dr. Yasmin Rashid, Omer Sarfraz Cheema and Shah Mehmood Qureshi had been in prison for a long period of time. He also criticized the military trial of over 100 PTI supporters over May 9, 2023 violence.
The letter also criticized the alleged censorship of content that favored PTI on the social and mainstream media and called it a violation of fundamental rights laid down in Article 19 of the Constitution.
The PTI founder also mentioned in his letter the alleged rigging at last year’s parliamentary elections and said that the 26th constitutional amendment was brought to “undermine the judiciary”. He asked Chief Justice to “exercise his powers to end what he called” the brutality of the state “.
