Daily Times

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) on Thursday informed the Lahore High Court (LHC) that there was no ban on the broadcast of former prime minister Imran Khan’s speeches.

Pemra’s counsel Haroon Duggal said this during the hearing of a petition filed by the founder of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) last year against Pemra’s decision to bar all TV channels from airing Imran’s speeches and press conferences. The hearing was presided over by Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza.

After the hearing, Justice Mirza directed the media regulatory body to not pressurise TV channels over barring the broadcast of Imran’s speeches. Separately, the LHC dismissed on Thursday the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) plea challenging the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision to revoke the party’s popular electoral symbol, the ‘cricket bat’

Announcing the decision reserved a day earlier, Justice Jawad Hasan declared the petition non-maintainable. Justice Jawad observed that the Peshawar High Court (PHC), through its order, passed in a writ petition, dated December 26, 2023, has already taken up the same matter and suspended the ECP’s decision. The order maintained that the matter was still pending adjudication there. “In these circumstances, agitating the same matter before two parallel forums may result in conflicting opinions thereby undermining the judicial process, besides resulting in multiplicity of litigation that may result in delaying the elections,” the LHC’s order stated. The high court further added that, “Such an endeavour indicates an attempt to undermine the judicial process by sidestepping the express directions given by the Supreme Court in the Supreme Court Bar Association Case.”

“It has been learnt that when the learned counsel for the petitioners, when confronted with the question whether the petitioners have challenged vires of Section 215(5) of the Act read with Article 17 of the Constitution, he replied that the same has been challenged before the Peshawar High Court,” the order stated.