By A month after the federal government imposed emergency rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and suspended the province’s elected government, the legal challenge to the takeover will not be heard in Peshawar today after all — the Peshawar High Court has struck the cases from its list, and the fight over the province’s suspended government now moves to the Federal Constitutional Court.
By Salar Khan
Reporter | The BNN Media – The Best News Network
News Beyond the Borders
Islamabad, Pakistan — The state of emergency in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was invoked on Sunday, 11 October 2026, under two articles of the Constitution dealing with security, and it effectively suspended the provincial government run by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The federal cabinet approved the move at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and President Asif Ali Zardari said in a social media post that he had approved the cabinet’s recommendations.
The Prime Minister’s Office said cabinet members had taken note of what it called the provincial government’s “deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism” — the justification on which the entire intervention rests. One month on, that justification, and the constitutional basis for the emergency itself, are now before the courts.
What Happened on 11 October
Under the proclamation, the provincial governor took charge of the province with an advisory council. Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told a news conference in Islamabad that the arrangement would initially remain in place for six months. An 11-member technocratic advisory council was formed the same day to assist the governor in exercising the functions of the provincial government.
Shortly after the announcement, PTI lawmaker Junaid Akbar said Sohail Afridi, the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, had been arrested along with the party’s president in the province. The minister of state for interior, Talal Chaudhry, later confirmed that Mr Afridi and some members of his cabinet had been taken into preventive custody. The PTI has governed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since 2013, and Mr Khan, though in jail for more than three years, still commands widespread popularity across the country, according to Al Jazeera.
The move came as the PTI was preparing for a march on the capital, Islamabad, to demand Mr Khan’s release. The march was originally scheduled for 27 September but was postponed until 4 October to allow talks between the government and the PTI leadership. The government said it would not allow the march to enter the capital and erected barriers using shipping containers to block the main access routes.
A provincial government elected by the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was suspended by a cabinet decision in Islamabad — and the courts are now being asked whether the Constitution allowed it.
Who Is in Charge Now
The takeover has deepened since October. On 4 November, the federal cabinet approved the transfer of the chief minister’s powers to the Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Faisal Karim Kundi, for the emergency period. A Cabinet Division gazette notification made the order effective immediately, and the governor must now send monthly reports to the federal government on how he uses those powers.
The federal government has also unveiled a new security plan for the province this week, including faceless anti-terror courts and a Rs70 billion boost for the police and the Counter Terrorism Department. The prime minister has separately announced a Rs160 billion development package for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for peace and development.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has argued that federal rule in the province was needed for Pakistan to combat terrorism effectively in a province that shares a porous border with Afghanistan. The government’s position, as set out in the proclamation, is that the provincial government had “failed to demonstrate the ownership, will and intent to adequately deal with the menace of terrorism”.
The Court Test — Moved, Not Heard
The legal challenge to the emergency has been building for weeks. The Peshawar High Court sought replies on petitions challenging governor’s rule in the province, with responses due by 7 November through officers of Grade 17 or above. PTI chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan is among the petitioners, and on 20 October a two-member bench of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Faheem Wali adjourned the matter until 10 November — today.
That hearing will not now take place. On 5 November, a two-member bench of the Federal Constitutional Court, headed by Chief Justice Aminuddin Khan and comprising Justice Aamer Farooq, issued a restraining order suspending proceedings initiated under Article 199 of the Constitution on or after 12 October 2026, holding that the deployment of the armed forces in the province under Article 245 restricted the Peshawar High Court’s constitutional jurisdiction over the affected proceedings.
Following that ruling, the Peshawar High Court’s administrative committee removed about 105 petitions from its 10 November hearing schedule — including the cases challenging the imposition of emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — and directed new petitioners toward the appropriate legal forum. The Federal Constitutional Court has clarified that cases concerning the imposition of governor’s rule and a provincial emergency fall within its jurisdiction.
The petitioners argue that the situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was not beyond the control of the provincial government — the test that justifies federal intervention — and they also challenge the invocation of Article 245 on deploying the armed forces, arguing the matter falls within provincial jurisdiction. Parliament approved the proclamation within the required ten days, but parliamentary approval does not settle the constitutional question now before the courts.
On Monday, 9 November, the opposition alliance Tehreek-e-Tahafuz-e-Ayin-e-Pakistan (TTAP) demanded a transparent and impartial judicial review of the emergency and governor’s rule, calling the measures extremely alarming for provincial autonomy, the public mandate and parliamentary democracy.
The courtroom in Peshawar will not decide the emergency today — the question of who is even allowed to judge it has itself become the dispute.
The Opposition’s Case
The PTI has said from the start that it will fight the takeover in court. Sheikh Waqas Akram, the party’s central information secretary, told Al Jazeera the party would challenge the imposition of emergency laws — suspending civil liberties — and governor’s rule, with a petition drafted by a legal committee headed by PTI secretary general Salman Akram Raja.
PTI spokesperson and Khan aide Zulfikar Bukhari described the government’s move as “more of a coup disguised as emergency” and warned it would cause “further bloodshed, instability and collateral damage”. The party also disputes the government’s account of the talks that preceded the emergency: Mr Naqvi has said the PTI agreed during negotiations that emergency rule should be imposed in 12 districts of the province, a claim Mr Akram rejected, saying the party had refused.
Aasiya Riaz, joint director of the independent think-tank the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), told Al Jazeera that the government’s stated premise — “a deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism” — was the constitutional premise needed for the imposition of emergency. The question for the court is whether the facts supported that premise.
The Security Picture Behind the Decision
The federal government’s case rests on a sharp deterioration in security in the province. According to a government white paper, 122 police personnel were killed in the province in the first half of this year, up from 63 during the same period in 2025. The Centre for Research and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based think-tank, recorded 556 violence-linked deaths in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa between July and September.
The violence has struck even the province’s public-health campaigns. The key facts, as reported by Al Jazeera:
- 2 November: Four people protecting polio workers were abducted in Tank district; they had yet to be found when the attack was reported, and search efforts were under way.
- 3 November: Gunmen travelling on a motorcycle opened fire on a police car in Mohmand district, killing two police officers protecting polio vaccination teams and wounding a third. No polio vaccination staff were in the vehicle.
- The campaign: A targeted drive launched on 2 November aimed to reach nearly 24 million children across 97 high-risk districts. Pakistan reported 31 polio cases last year, and has confirmed eight cases this year — six of them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus remains endemic. The attacks on the people guarding the vaccinators underline why the province’s security crisis is also a public-health crisis — and why the federal government says it could no longer leave the fight against militancy to a provincial administration it accuses of disengagement.
The security figures are grim, and no side in this dispute contests them — the argument is over who should be in charge of answering them.
What Happens Next
There will be no hearing in Peshawar today. The challenge to the emergency and governor’s rule now sits with the Federal Constitutional Court, which has taken the petitions within its own jurisdiction. If that court finds the emergency was lawfully imposed, the governor’s rule will continue for its initial six-month term, with the governor exercising the chief minister’s powers and reporting monthly to Islamabad. If it finds otherwise, the federal government will face the most serious constitutional reverse of its term — and the PTI will demand the immediate restoration of its government.
Either way, the province’s people are living under an arrangement in which their elected government is suspended, their chief minister is in preventive custody, and their assembly’s future is uncertain. The emergency was imposed in the name of the fight against terrorism; a month later, the polio attacks in Mohmand and Tank show that fight is far from won, and the courtroom that will now decide whether the way the fight is being run is lawful at all sits in Islamabad, not Peshawar.
By Salar Khan
Reporter | The BNN Media – The Best News Network
News Beyond the Borders
