The hearing against about 50 PPP leaders and activists accused of holding a protest demonstration in front of the Parliament House eight years ago will be held on Tuesday in a local court.
Proceedings will be held amid reports of growing contacts between the presidential aides and the party leadership over their possible working relationship after the elections.
These PPP activists including Naheed Khan MNA, Nayyer Bokhari MNA, ex-senator Farhatullah Babar, Qazi Sultan Mahmood, Syed Ibrar Rizvi, Abdul Majeed Rizvi, Babar Minhas, Syed Ibn-i-Rivi, Shahnawaz, Shabbir Babar, Jehangir Akhtar and Sohail Rumi besides others had been charged with demonstrating in front of the Parliament building on April 22, 1998.
The case was registered when PPP activists staged a protest rally outside the Parliament House against the anti-terrorism legislation, which gave sweeping powers to the executive. A large number of protestors were arrested on the spot and sent to jail.
The demonstrators were forcibly dispersed when the police resorted to baton charge resulting in injury to many party workers and activists. They had demanded review of the law.
Later the Supreme Court struck down various provisions of the proposed legislation including the one relating to the setting up of military courts to try terror cases.
Initially the accused were booked under the anti-terror law against which they protested. Later, however, the government withdrew the terrorism charges and booked the protestors under eight different sections of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Meanwhile, PPP Information Secretary Sherry Rehman has rejected all the reports about possible changes in senior party positions as entirely baseless.
The party has categorically dismissed all such reports as grounded in speculation, and has reiterated the party leadership's complete confidence in the secretary general, Jehangir Badr, president of the NWFP, Rahimdad Khan, as well as the president women's wing Punjab, Begum Belum Hasnain, whose offices have come under such speculation in certain sections of the press, she said in a statement. It is interesting that the same statement was issued to the media last week.
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