The Sindh High Court has rejected a constitutional petition filed by Pakistan's Geo television network challenging the ban on the broadcast of its news, sports and entertainment channels.
A division bench accepted the argument of the Deputy Attorney General Rizwan Ahmed Siddiqui that the petition filed by Geo TV was 'non-maintainable.'
Siddiqui, who represented the federal government, argued that the petition had no legal and constitutional worth as emergency had been declared and the authorities had 'all rights to take any action meant to maintain law and order in the country.'
He pointed out that human rights were suspended and under these circumstances, there was 'no justification for such a petition.'
Siddiqui also drew the bench's attention to a Supreme Court verdict, which had termed a similar petition by Geo TV as non-maintainable.
Geo News, part of the influential Jang media group, is the only Pakistani news channel that continues to be off the country's cable networks.
All domestic and foreign news channels were taken off the air hours after President Pervez Musharraf imposed an emergency on November 3. They were allowed to resume broadcasting after agreeing to abide by a government-mandated code of conduct.
Geo refused to accept the code and was stopped from broadcasting from Dubai last month. It recently resumed beaming programmes via satellite from Dubai but is still not available on Pakistan's cable networks.The channel's counsel Mazhar Ali unsuccessfully argued before the high court that there was no reason to ban the telecast of Geo's sports and entertainment channels.
