Salman Akram Raja questions lawyers’ jail meetingPakistan

According to Raja, the meeting was not an ordinary one. He said it had some objectives and that an opportunity for political discussion was also given during it, which, in his view, made the interaction different from a routine legal consultation.

What Raja said about the meeting

Raja said the fact that a political discussion took place during the meeting was itself significant. He did not name the people he described as more favoured, nor did he specify what objectives he believed the meeting served.

He also referred to remarks attributed to the PTI founder during the meeting. According to Raja, the founder said there should be smaller provinces and units for governance, but added that this was not the way to go about it.

Raja quoted the founder as saying that there was no room in the Constitution to create provinces through a referendum. He further said that when the sanctity of the vote did not exist in the whole system, the sanctity of a referendum could not be created either.

Context of the remarks

Raja’s comments came in a television discussion about the lawyers’ access to the PTI founder in jail. The question of meetings with the founder has remained a subject of discussion in political circles, with the PTI leadership repeatedly raising concerns about access to him.

The remarks also touched on the long-running debate in Pakistan over the creation of new provinces, a subject that has been raised by various political leaders over the years without any constitutional change taking place.

Raja did not elaborate further on his doubts about the meeting, and no official response to his remarks had been reported at the time of publication. The programme discussion did not include further detail about who arranged the meeting or exactly when it took place.