KHUDAYAR MOHLA

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the upcoming elections of mayors and deputy mayors across Sindh, including Karachi, till the examination of a detailed verdict of the Sindh High Court (SHC) which had declared amendment to the local government law that replaced secret ballot into a show of hands to choose representatives in the province as void.

The SHC had accepted pleas of MQM, PML-F and others seeking the court’s intervention to set aside the Sindh government’ amendment in the local government law in violation of Article 266 of the Constitution and declare show of hands to elect representatives void.

To which, the Sindh government moved the top court against the SHC judgement seeking suspension of the High Court order immediately till final judgement of the appeal in hand.

The Sindh government submitted that the executive power under the Constitution has been unduly impaired, restrained and restricted as a result of the SHC judgment. A three-member bench led by Justice Gulzar Ahmed, comprising Justice Umar Ata Bandial and Justice Maqbool Baqar resumed the hearing of the appeal and decided to examine the SHC detailed judgement before issuing any final order in the matter.

The hearing of appeal was adjourned till March 3.