The Peshawar High Court will no longer hear constitutional petitions filed on or after 12 October, after its administrative committee decided on Friday to implement an order of the Federal Constitutional Court that suspended such proceedings across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Fresh petitions will not be entertained at all and will be returned to the petitioners, who have been directed to approach the “appropriate” forum instead.
The committee met in Peshawar under Chief Justice S.M. Attique Shah, with Senior Puisne Judge Ijaz Anwar and Justices Syed Arshad Ali, Sahibzada Asadullah and Mohammad Naeem Anwar in attendance. It directed the high court’s offices not to fix for hearing any writ petition filed under Article 199 of the Constitution on or after 12 October, and decided that no new petition of that kind should be received.
The order it was carrying out came a day earlier from the Federal Constitutional Court. On Thursday, a two-member bench headed by Chief Justice Aminuddin Khan and comprising Justice Aamir Farooq declared that, since the armed forces had been called to act in aid of civil power in the entire province under the order of 11 October and the Defence Ministry’s memorandum of 12 October, “the proceedings before the Peshawar High Court instituted under Article 199 on or after 12.10.2026 shall, in terms of clause (4) of Article 245, remain suspended”.
The backdrop is the emergency imposed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on 11 October. President Asif Ali Zardari issued a proclamation under Articles 232 and 234 of the Constitution, the federal government assumed control of the province through Governor Faisal Karim Kundi, and the Interior Ministry issued an order under Article 245 authorising the deployment of Pakistan Army troops in aid of civil power for the duration of the proclamation. The Prime Minister’s Office said the move followed the provincial government’s “deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism”, and Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said at the time that the arrangement would initially be in place for six months.
What brought the matter before the constitutional court was the wave of detentions that followed the emergency. Authorities issued detention orders for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leaders and workers in large numbers under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, and the Peshawar High Court granted interim relief in dozens of cases, directing releases against surety bonds of Rs100,000 each. The provincial home department challenged those interim orders in more than 60 appeals, and the Federal Constitutional Court took up the set of petitions together.
The constitutional court did not only suspend the proceedings. It directed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Advocate General, Sanaullah Khan, to submit a report within seven days identifying the areas of the province where the armed forces were no longer required to act in aid of civil power, and said it might consider modifying its order after examining that report. It also issued notices to the respondents and to the Attorney General for Pakistan under Order XXVII-A of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, noting that important questions involving the interpretation of the Constitution were involved, before adjourning the case for an indefinite period.
The practical effect reaches well beyond the detention cases. The decision will affect petitions challenging the imposition of emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and petitions over the alleged illegal detention of Chief Minister Sohail Afridi — described in the proceedings as dysfunctional — provincial assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swati, provincial PTI president Junaid Akbar and several other lawmakers and party leaders. It will also affect challenges to detentions under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, as well as habeas corpus pleas, cases against the ongoing anti-encroachment campaigns, service matters and family disputes.
The order has already divided legal opinion. Article 245(3) of the Constitution says a high court shall not exercise jurisdiction under Article 199 in relation to any area in which the armed forces are acting in aid of civil power, while preserving proceedings that were pending immediately before the day the forces were deployed. Some lawyers read the constitutional court’s order as covering every Article 199 petition filed on or after 12 October, while others argue it applies only to petitions against detentions under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. The Peshawar High Court’s administrative committee has applied it in the wider sense, to all such petitions.
The same emergency has already halted the province’s democratic calendar. The Election Commission of Pakistan has suspended all preparations for local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after the federal government extended the suspension of Article 140-A of the Constitution to every district in the province. At the same time, the line drawn by the 12 October cut-off is visible in the courts themselves: the Peshawar High Court’s Bannu bench granted interim relief to two officials in suspension and transfer cases on Saturday, in proceedings that began before the cut-off date.
What happens next now turns on the advocate general’s report. Once it is filed, the Federal Constitutional Court will examine which parts of the province still need the armed forces in aid of civil power and may revisit the suspension. Until then, anyone whose petition falls on or after 12 October must find another forum, the emergency itself remains in force, and the most consequential legal challenges to it — including those over the detention of the province’s elected leadership — have nowhere to be heard in the province’s own high court.
