A division bench of Sindh High Court (SHC) Thursday dismissed a petition seeking division of Sindh into seven states or administrative units besides Karachi as an autonomous state by declaring it as non-maintainable.
SHC's bench headed by Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M Sheikh resumed the hearing on the petition, which was filed by a citizen - Azmat Wali, who moved SHC by submitting that the division of the province from an administrative point of view was necessary and would be in the best interest of the province. He submitted that several countries had no more than a population of five million of their provinces, which was necessary for the administration and securing the rights of the citizens. The Chief Justice inquired about the article of the Constitution, which provides for creation of new states or administrative units in the federation of Pakistan.
The last hearing of the petition was conducted by a bench headed by Justice Aqeel Abbasi and sought the reply from Sindh government in this regard.
The petitioner pleaded that Sindh should be divided into seven autonomous states/administrative units - Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Nawabshah, Sukkur, Larkana, Dadu and Jacobabad - and each state would be responsible to generate revenue for its expenses and all the management system. He contended that every state of Sindh was rich and capable enough to maintain its expenses and could generate more revenue than its requirements. He prayed the court to order the federal and provincial governments to divide the territory of Sindh into seven states and Karachi as an independent state to run the administrative matters. The petitioner made Secretaries Interior & Defence and Chief Secretary Sindh respondents in the petition.
Sindh Additional Advocate General Shabbir Shah argued that the petition should be dismissed as it holds no ground to be declared maintainable. He contended that there is a special provision in the Constitution for the creation of new provinces. The Additional Advocate General argued that a new federating unit can't be carved out even if the parliament amends the Constitution by two third majority without the consent of the respective province. He contended that the petition should be dismissed by terming it infructuous.
The Chief Justice SHC observed that provinces come into existence after centuries-long evolutionary process. He questioned whether a new province can be created in Canada, Punjabi is the second biggest language in country.
After hearing the arguments from both sides, SHC bench dismissed the petition on the ground that it is not maintainable.
Meanwhile, a SHC bench granted extension in the bail of former Director General Lyari Development Authority (LDA) Agha Maqsood Abbas and sought the progress report from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) into the case pertaining to alleged corruption causing Rs 53.62 million loss to the exchequer.
The NAB filed a reference against former DG LDA for investing Rs 1 billion from public funds without the approval of the competent authority and declared low returns on this investment. This caused Rs 53.60 million loss to the exchequer.
The defence counsel contested the reference of the NAB pleading that this reference should be set aside as it was filed with a malicious intention.