MUZAFFARABAD: Several working journalists on Sunday stayed away from an illegal exercise dubbed as ‘elections’ in Central Press Club (CPC) of Muzaffarabad in violation of a judicial order.
On Saturday, the district and sessions judge Muzaffarabad had directed the club’s outgoing president, election commissioner, and some others to maintain the status quo vis-à-vis elections, slated for January 7, until the next hearing on Monday.
The order was passed by the judge on the application of three senior journalists Farooq Khan Mughal, Zulkifal Sarfraz, and Adeel Ahmed Khan whose names were unilaterally omitted by the outgoing executive body from the voters’ list, without serving them any notice in fulfillment of the laid down constitutional process for the purpose.
The aggrieved journalists believed that their names were deleted because the outgoing president and his group feared that the trio may not vote in his favor in the annual elections of the club. As they failed to get justice from election commissioner
Raja Iftikhar, a partisan of the outgoing body, they were left with no choice but to file a lawsuit in the court of law which ordered maintenance of the status quo.
Interestingly, except for the outgoing secretary Basharat Mughal, who had strongly opposed the omission of the names of bonafide journalists, the outgoing president and election commissioner had refused to receive the court notices despite being present in the club building.
Witnesses said that the court notices were not only displayed on the club’s notice board but were also publicized through social media platforms but the defiant election commissioner did not show any respect for the judiciary and brazenly conducted what he called ‘elections’ on Sunday. Of the three-member election committee, Syed Abbas Gardezi however declined to become part of the illegal process in compliance with the court order.
The unilateral ‘polling’ was held in the absence of a large number of senior and prominent journalists who vowed at a meeting to fight the ille
gality at all appropriate forums, along with entreaties to determine the qualification of a journalist so that the community could be purged of semi-literate non-professionals divesting bonafide journalists of their rights and privileges.