The top court asks Air Marshal Arshad Malik to come up with his decision that whether he wanted to work with PIA or with PAF and adjourned the hearing till the first week of March.
SLAMABAD: (Urdu Point/Pakistan Point News-Feb 20th, 2020) The Supreme Court has declared Air Marshal Arshad Mehmood Malik’s appointment as head of Pakistan International Airline (PIA) as “illegal”, holding that two offices cannot be held at the same time.
A SC three-member bench led by Chief of Pakistan Justice Gulzar Ahmad asked Arshad Malik to choose one of the two jobs; either with PIA or with Pakistan Air Force.
Previously, the top court turned down his appeal against verdict of Sindh High Court in which he was restrained from performing his duties as CEO of national flag carrier.
On Thursday, the top judge remarked that Arshad Malik either should resign from air force and permanently join PIA as only one thing can be done and not the two.
The court observed that PIA required a “permanent chairman” who could look it after pure on professional lines and make it profitable. The court also sought final decision from Malik by the next date of hearing and adjourned the till the first week of March.
During the arguments when the top judge was told that former Air Marshal Nur Khan also worked for the national carrier to which the CJP remarked that “they were big people and should not be compared to anyone,”. Justice Sajjad Ali Shah observed that the government should close all its offices if it could not control the employees who stopped PIA from functioning.
The SC also turned down PIA’s report about mysterious sale of an Airbus plane owned by the national flag carrier in 2017, giving remarks that it did nothing but just paper investigation. The top court directed the NAB to continue its investigation into the matter that how the plane was sold. The mysterious sale of the PIA plane had caught the attention of the top court on Feb 13 when it asked that whether sale of the aircraft was amount to a national office or not.
