While hearing a plea questioning legality of incumbent Chairman Arif Changezi and other members of the Executive Committee of Pakistan Council of Architects and Town Planners (PCATP), Islamabad High Court suspended show cause notices which Changezi had issued to Architect Jahangir Khan Sherpao and others.
Invoking jurisdiction of Islamabad High Court (IHC) a well-known architect Usman Mirza has filed a writ of quo warranto against Chairman Arif Changezi and other members of the Executive Committee of the PCATP.
Advocate Supreme Court Umer Ijaz Gilani represented architect Usman Mirza before single-member bench of the IHC comprising Justice Babar Sattar. He apprised the bench that incumbent body of the PCATP have been elected through an illegal election saying matter relating to legality of such election is under adjudication before the IHC.
The petitioner alleged that Chairman Arif Changezi has assumed office by rigging the online elections of the PCATP earlier this year. The petitioner has brought on the Court’s record documents where the IT company retained for conducting online elections openly admitted that their election system got hacked and results were not reliable. Chairman Arif Changezi who was running for a second term took advantage of the situation and had himself declared the winner.
The bench was also informed that notwithstanding the question of legality of such election, the functionaries have assumed the office and continued to exercise the authority of PCATP in taking penal action against the petitioner and other architects, who questioned the legality of the election. After hearing preliminary arguments of counsel for the petitioner, Justice Babar Sattar issued notice to the respondents on a fresh writ of quo warranto. The Court issued notices to the Federation as well as the respondents to file parawise comments before the next date of hearing.
It is pertinent to mention that in an earlier petition, filed by a separate set of architects, the FIA submitted a starltling report in IHC pointing out that it was able to trace the location from which the hacking took place. The location matches with the Karachi address of Chairman Arif Changezi, the beneficiary of the hacking.
In his defense, Architect Changezi told FIA that he was simply trying to cast the vote on behalf of one his voters who had disclosed her password to him. He made about 15 efforts to log in and out of the online system for this purpose alone, this giving the impression of involvement in suspicious activity.
Last week, the IHC suspended show cause notices which Chairman Changezi had issued to Architect Jahangir Khan Sherpao and other rival candidates who have challenged the validity of Chairman Changezi ‘s election in court and are creating awareness in the community on this subject. Chairman Changezi tried to silence their voices through show cause notices. The High Court noted the element of conflict of interest and political victimatization in his actions and granted stay order to the aggrieved architects. All these cases will be heard together in December.
