The Islamabad High Court has issued a 37-page judgment setting limits on the right to protest (Express Tribune).
The bench
Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar, with Justices Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Azam Khan, ruling on a petition against PTI’s planned 27 September march.
The core holding
That political parties hold constitutional rights of assembly, but “the right to peaceful assembly could not be exercised in a manner that infringed the fundamental rights of other citizens.”
What it prohibits
– occupying roads, highways or public spaces within or leading to Islamabad in a way that obstructs movement or access to business, medical or educational services – provincial governments using public funds, vehicles, machinery or personnel to facilitate marches on the capital – compelling public servants to take part
The finding with the sharpest edge
Any public official whose actions violate citizens’ fundamental rights would be held to have violated both the Constitution and their oath of office.
That is aimed at administrators on both sides of this: those who might deploy provincial machinery for a march, and those who might exceed their powers in stopping one.
The precedent it rests on
The Supreme Court’s Faizabad sit-in judgment, and the conduct of PTI’s marches in 2022 and 2024, in which violence and property damage occurred.
What the judgment does not do
It does not ban the march. The prohibition is on occupation — of roads, interchanges, public places — which is a different act from processing along them.
That distinction will decide what happens on 27 September, and it places the burden on how a crowd behaves when it arrives rather than on whether it sets out.
The balance the court claimed to strike
The judgment says the case required “an unusual degree of constitutional balance” between Article 16 assembly rights and citizens’ rights to life, liberty, movement, trade and access to services.
Whether that balance holds in practice will be tested by two marches: Jamaat-i-Islami on the 20th, over the petroleum levy, and PTI on the 27th.
What is not established
The full text has not been published in the reporting we have seen. No party has said whether it will appeal, and no enforcement mechanism beyond contempt has been described.
[Image: The Express Tribune]
