Daily Times

KARACHI: As the country’s first census in almost two decades kicks off today a petition was filed in the Sindh High Court against the relevant authorities for not counting disabled persons separately.

Imran Shehzad, Pakistan Association of the Blind’s General Secretary Muhammad Hussain and others have petitioned the High court against the federal and provincial authorities for not incorporating a separate box in the main census form to count disabled persons.

When the petition came up for hearing, a two-judge bench directed the respondent authorities to respond to the petition till March 17.

While expressing concern over non-inclusion of a box to count the special persons separately, the judges observed that it was crucially important to add the separate box for the disabled persons.

It would not be construed as negligence on the part of the authorities concerned to ignore disabled persons, but usurping special persons’ rights, observed one member of the bench.

The petitioners submitted that the column for special persons was not incorporated in the form of the census which was going to be conducted after a gap of 19 years.

Therefore, it the exact number of disabled persons living in the country would never be known, which would lead to trampling of their rights.

According to the reports of an international organization, around 10 percent of the total population of the under-developed countries constituted disabled person, petitioner Muhammad Hussain said adding that terrorist activities particularly in Pakistan had added to the proportion of special persons.

The petitioners pleaded the court to issue directives for the authorities to add a separate column for disabled persons to count them.

FBR official’s bail plea: Meanwhile, another bench sought comments from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the bail plea of a Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) auditor who has been incarcerated in a case pertaining to Rs21.659million corruption.

Kashif Naseer has been booked on charges of facilitating a tax refund fraud that deprived the national exchequer of Rs21.659 million.

According to National Accountability Bureau reference, Naseer deliberately failed to discharge his duty to prevent the grant and misused his powers resulting in a loss of millions of rupees to the national exchequer.

Regent Plaza fire case: Two owners and three employees of Regent Plaza, where a huge fire had immolated twelve people, including five doctors, managed to escape after a local court cancelled their bail pleas in plaza fire case.

The hotel’s chief executive officer Muzaffar Baweja, managing director Zubair Baweja, chief security officer retired Major Mohammad Saad, chief engineer Arshad Mughal and supervising engineer Saleem Pervez were nominated in the case related to the deadly fire that erupted at the hotel killing 12 people and wounding over 50 on Dec 5, 2016.

Earlier, the court had granted the suspects interim pre-arrest bail.

The investigation officer in his final investigation report had submitted that the fire and safety system was installed in the hotel in 1994 which had become dysfunctional. Whereas the documents produced regarding fire-fighting equipment at the hotel could not be validated.

Saddar police had registered a case against the suspects under Sections 322 (punishment for qatl bis sabab), 337-A (punishment of shajjah), 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code.