PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Wednesday issued contempt of court notice to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister, Nowshera district nazim and deputy commissioner or non-compliance with the court orders on hand-over of the property of the Botanical Gardens of the University of Peshawar.
A division bench comprising Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim Khan issued the notice to Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, District Nazim Liaqat Khattak and Deputy Commissioner Iftikhar Alam. They were directed to explain their position for non-compliance with the court order.
The court issued the notice in a writ petition filed by Peshawar University Teacher’s Association (PUTA) through lawyers Mohibullah Kakakhel and Saifullah Mohib.
During the hearing, Mohibullah Kakakhel, submitted before the court to restrain the respondents from taking any step for handing over the property of Botanical Garden of the University of Peshawar at Azakhel Payan to any other university or organisation. It was prayed in the contempt petition to initiate contempt of court proceedings against the contemnors and have them punished in accordance with the law.
He informed the bench that the PHC in 2014 had allowed the UoP writ petition. It had declared the decision of the chief minister to allot the UoP property to other private universities as void. The counsel said the provincial government then challenged PHC decision in the Supreme Court. The government later withdrew the petition after smelling that it was likely to be dismissed.
Despite the PHC decision and then conformation of the order up to Supreme Court, the contemnors, he said have once again tried to illegally get the property of the UoP and put it to their personnel use by doing the same acts of contempt of court, which they had previously done when their petition was pending in the court.
The lawyer argued that the UoP first filed the writ petition through its Syndicate, challenging the illegal acts of the contemnors. But despite the interim order by the high court, the contemnors committed transgression into the property of the university worth billions of rupees.
Mohibullah Kakakhel submitted that the matter in the present writ petition and the previous one was the same. First the chief minister had passed orders for taking over the property of the university, which is used as Research Botanical Gardens.
And now, he submitted, the brother of the chief minister, Liaqat Khattak, who is District Nazim of Nowshera with the help of deputy commissioner of Nowshera under the directions of the chief minister, has once again passed orders to take over the same property and hand it over to the same so-called private universities, which the high court had earlier declared void.
It was prayed in the petition that the present chief minister, his brother and deputy commissioner and all others involved in the contempt may be dealt with an iron hand because they have the least respect for law and courts.
“It has been learnt that there is a lot of under table monetary deal behind the present act of attempt of illegal dispossession of the applicant/University of Peshawar from the present and same premises,” the petitioner revealed in the petition.
