PML-N member will lead march to top judge's house

Islamabad: The head of a parliamentary panel on Tuesday announced that he would lead a protest march to the official residence of Chief Justice Abdul Hamid Dogar, whose daughter has been accused of flouting rules to obtain additional marks to secure admission in a medical college.

Opposition legislator and chairman of the education committee of the Lower House, Abid Sher Ali, said that, during the protest on January 22, he would join ranks with students who had been directly affected by the manipulation of the admission system.

Deserving students had been forced to forgo their seats to make way for Dogar's daughter and some other students who managed to vault up in the rankings by getting their marks increased through unauthorised rechecking, Ali said.

"I will protest along with affected students and we will march on the residence of Justice Dogar. We will tell the people that the top judge has deprived deserving students of admission just to benefit his daughter," he said.

Nawaz Sharif's case

Ali belongs to the Pakistan Muslim League faction (PML-N) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who yesterday refused to appear before a court in a case relating to his eligibility to contest the elections, saying he does not recognise Justice Dogar as Chief Justice of Pakistan.

Sharif complained that a judge who could not ensure justice even for the student community and had been accused of providing undue advantage to his daughter was not fit to be chief justice of the country.

Farah Dogar, who is at the centre of the whole controversy, has denied any wrongdoing and had earlier issued a press statement saying that she had, along with with dozens of other students got her marks revalued through perfectly legal means. The case is being heard by the Islamabad High Court.

The case took a dramatic turn when the parliamentary committee looked into the case after it made headlines in the media in November last year.

The PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party) government and the Speaker of the National Assembly employed every means to stop the committee from taking up the case and a supreme court judge later stayed proceedings of the panel. The stay was overruled by a supreme court bench in December.

The refusal of the National Assembly Secretariat to allow the proceedings of the education committee recently prompted Ali to announce the protest march in a bid to bring the issue back into the public and media eye.

The PML-N does not recognise Justice Dogar as chief justice of the country for taking oath under the Emergency laws of the then president Pervez Musharraf on November 2, 2007. Musharraf, at that time, had sent packing around 62 judges of the apex courts including former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.