MUZAFFARABAD: On Tuesday, the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Supreme Court admitted two appeals against a high court decision that had upheld the controversial law, but also suspended the enforcement of the “Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Ordinance, 2024.”
Three members of the Central Bar Association, Muzaffarabad, and the AJK Bar Council initially challenged the ordinance before the AJK high court.
Both parties then filed petitions for permission to appeal in the Supreme Court in an attempt to have the high court’s decision overturned after the high court dismissed the petitions in limine.
Senior attorneys Raja Sajjad Ahmed and Raja Amjad Ali Khan, who represented both parties, claimed that the high court had ignored important arguments made in the petitions contesting the ordinance’s legitimacy.
They argued that the contested law violated the Constitution since the legislature lacked the authority to deny the state subjects the fundamental rights protected by the AJK’s interim constitution.
Additionally, they argued that the new ordinance was superfluous and unnecessary because the laws already in place were adequate to control the use of these rights.
The SC full bench, led by AJK Chief Justice Raja Saeed Akram, provided temporary respite by putting the ordinance on hold till the issue was resolved.
By turning both leave appeals into regular appeals, the SC combined them into a single regular case and declared that thorough hearings would be followed by a detailed ruling.
Unaltered strike call
Less than 48 hours before a state-wide walkout organized by the Jammu & Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JKJAAC), a coalition of civil society organizations that mainly represent shopkeepers, the ordinance was suspended.
JKJAAC core committee member Shaukat Nawaz Mir praised the SC’s intervention but declared that the strike would continue unless the government legally revoked the ordinance and freed activists who had been imprisoned for protesting it.
He asserted that “the ordinance was a targeted move to suppress the JKJAAC.” “The Supreme legal has not barred us from demonstrating, nor were we a party to the legal petitions against it. He predicted that even more people will come to the streets this time.
Concerning the balance between preserving public order and protecting civil freedoms in the liberated territory, the committee and other civil society organizations believe that the ordinance violates the people’s constitutional right to peaceful assembly and expression.
