PESHAWAR — The Peshawar High Court was set to open hearings on Tuesday on petitions by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) challenging the emergency and governor’s rule imposed on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as the party of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan pressed its legal fight to restore its suspended provincial government.
The court fixed October 20 for the hearing of separate petitions filed by PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and Advocate Salman Khan, naming the federation, the president, the prime minister, the provincial governor and other authorities, according to reporting on the court’s scheduling. The court had granted no interim relief before Tuesday’s hearing. PTI also submitted an amended petition on October 19 arguing that Article 232 requires a resolution from the provincial assembly before a provincial emergency can be declared, and asking the court to suspend the notification, according to a summary of the filing published on Tuesday.
The case goes back to October 11, when President Asif Ali Zardari, on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s advice after a federal cabinet decision, declared a state of emergency in the northwestern province bordering Afghanistan and suspended the PTI-led government, according to Reuters. The federal government said the province had failed to tackle a sharp rise in militant attacks. An opponent from Zardari’s party was put in charge, and the constitution’s Articles 232 and 234 were invoked. Both houses of Parliament endorsed the proclamations in votes on October 14 and 15, despite PTI protests, according to reporting of the sessions.
PTI says the emergency is a pretext for a political takeover that strips it of the provincial budget’s resources and stops its supporters from marching on Islamabad to demand Khan’s release and medical treatment. “It was ridiculous to equate Imran Khan’s basic human rights with a complex issue such as terrorism,” Khan aide Zulfi Bukhari said, according to Reuters. Gohar, in the National Assembly, said: “You have sent an elected government home. We reject all your notifications. You have attacked democracy,” according to Pakistani reporting of his speech. The party’s 86-page petition, filed through Advocate Shah Faisal Ilyas, also challenges the deployment of the armed forces under Article 245 and the 11-member advisory council, and asks the court to declare the proclamation unconstitutional.
The confrontation has already turned violent on the ground. Reuters reported on October 13 that police fired tear gas — and, party officials said, live rounds — at Khan supporters in the province; the provincial administration rejected the live-firing account as baseless and said police responded in a calibrated way to rioting, with about 50 arrests. Reuters said it could not independently verify the footage or the competing accounts. Khan’s three sisters and hundreds of supporters were arrested ahead of a planned march, according to Reuters, and senior PTI figures including former chief minister Sohail Afridi were taken into preventive custody, a federal minister confirmed to Reuters.
Why it matters: the hearing is the first judicial review of the federal intervention, and it will test whether the constitutionally required process was followed before an elected provincial government was suspended — a question with consequences for federal-provincial relations across Pakistan, not only for PTI. Analyst Najam Sethi told Reuters the party “lost on both counts” in the first phase, extracting no concessions for Khan while losing its provincial government.
What happens next: the court will hear arguments on maintainability and the constitutional questions, and may consider interim relief; no ruling had been issued as hearings opened on Tuesday. PTI leaders say they will continue legal, parliamentary and peaceful protest pressure in parallel. This is a developing story and will be updated as the court proceeds. Read the Reuters background report here.
