By Staff Reporter
PESHAWAR: The chairman of Pakistan’s largest opposition party has asked the Peshawar High Court to strike down the federal government’s imposition of emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, calling it unconstitutional and demanding the immediate reinstatement of the province’s detained chief minister.
Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, who heads Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party founded by the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, filed the petition on Wednesday. It asks the court to declare the 11 October proclamation “unconstitutional, ultra vires, coram non judice, tainted with malice in law and fact, devoid of objective material, and of no legal effect”.
The filing came the same day the National Assembly and the Senate passed resolutions endorsing the emergency by majority votes, over loud objections from opposition members. A joint sitting of parliament is due on Thursday to consider the governor’s rule order issued under Article 234.
The emergency was declared on Sunday after President Asif Ali Zardari acted on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Governor Faisal Karim Kundi now runs the province on behalf of the Centre, assisted by an 11-member technocratic advisory council. The government has also authorised the deployment of troops and army assets to support civil authorities.
Sohail Afridi, the PTI chief minister, has been rendered non-functional. Officials confirmed on Monday that he and several cabinet members were taken into preventive custody shortly after the proclamation.
The move followed a sharp deterioration in relations between Islamabad and the PTI-run provincial government. Counterterrorism policy was one of the main reasons both sides gave for the collapse of their talks on 3 October. The emergency came a week after supporters of Imran Khan marched through the province demanding his release and access to medical treatment.
Gohar’s lawyers include Barrister Sameer Khosa, Salman Akram Raja, Ali Zaman, Sardar Haseeb Ahmad and Zainab Shahid. The petition was filed under Article 199 of the Constitution. It names the federation, represented by the cabinet, law, interior and defence secretaries, as a respondent. The others are the province, Governor Kundi, the provincial assembly speaker and the secretary of the KP Home and Tribal Affairs Department. Mr Afridi is a pro forma respondent.
The petition seeks to overturn the proclamation, the army deployment order and everything that followed from them. It specifically targets:
– the advisory council;
– the “Area Development Secretariat” covering 12 districts;
– the removal of the province’s advocate general; and
– the detention and unseating of Mr Afridi.
It asks the court to declare that the paragraph telling the chief minister and his ministers to cease holding office is illegal and violates fundamental rights. It wants Mr Afridi and his cabinet restored with full executive powers under Article 130, and ordered released from what the petition calls unlawful detention. It also asks that Mr Afridi be produced before the court and that he and his ministers not be moved out of its jurisdiction.
The petition further challenges the paragraph transferring the provincial assembly’s legislative powers to parliament, calling it “void ab initio” and a usurpation of provincial autonomy. It asks the court to bar parliament from taking up any provincial legislative business for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
On the army deployment under Article 245, the petition argues that troops cannot be used to “supplant or bypass the civilian executive” and cannot be called in without a lawful request from the provincial government. It also asks the court to order the removal of containers and barricades around the assembly secretariat and the chief minister’s secretariat. It seeks to restrain the Area Development Secretariat’s administrator and additional chief secretary from exercising parallel administrative or law enforcement powers. And it wants the federal government to place before the court the governor’s report and the cabinet summary on which the emergency rests.
The petition’s central argument is procedural. It says an emergency of this kind under Article 232(1) requires a prior resolution of the provincial assembly, and that none was “ever moved, debated, or passed”. Without it, the petition says, the federal government had no competence to advise the proclamation, which it says also breaches the federal structure under Article 1, the Objectives Resolution and the province’s legislative domain under Article 142.
It adds that the proclamation does not claim a grave emergency arising from war or external aggression, and that no such threat exists. It also says the “internal disturbance” rationale lacks any objective criterion.
The petition points to Balochistan, where it says terrorist violence has been high without any emergency being declared. It argues that the security justification in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is “a colourable device” in violation of Article 25, the equality clause. It says the real reason is that the province is governed by the opposition and that Islamabad rejects its demands over Imran Khan. It also notes that no emergency was imposed anywhere in Pakistan during the worst years of terrorism, between 2007 and 2015. It describes the invocation of Article 234 as “without lawful authority”.
Speaking outside parliament, Gohar said that if the government wanted to fight terrorism, “you should have strengthened the provincial government”. He also accused it of effectively reviving the president’s old power to dismiss assemblies under Article 58(2)(b). Reports say the party has asked for an early hearing.
The government’s case
Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told the National Assembly that the cabinet deliberated for two and a half hours before recommending the emergency. He gave figures of 2,911 terrorist incidents in the province between 2021 and 2024, and 3,787 between 15 October 2025 and 9 October 2026. He accused Afridi’s government of putting political activity ahead of law and order.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi told the Senate on Tuesday that talks with the PTI had come close to a deal before consultations involving Mr Afridi derailed them. The Senate opposition leader alleged the talks were a sham and that the decision had been taken before they ended.
The Pakistan Peoples Party, a key partner in Sharif’s coalition, backed the measure. Its chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, called it a “difficult decision”. Under Article 232, parliament must approve an emergency within 10 days. A governor’s rule proclamation under Article 234 lapses after two months unless a joint sitting extends it.
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