The contesting respondent is the trade body of media houses and suchlike organizations regulated under the Ordinance. They are aggrieved by a decision taken by the Authority to delegate, under s. 13 of the Ordinance, its powers under s. 30 to its Chairman. The said delegation was challenged in the High Court of Sindh, and by means of the impugned judgment a learned Division Bench disposed of the petition in the following terms:
“We declare that the powers of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority vested in Section 30 of the PEMRA Ordinance 2002 could not be delegated to the Chairman or any other official of PEMRA by dint of Section 13 of PEMRA Ordinance, 2002 for suspension of Broadcast Media Licenses without framing of Rules. Henceforth, the decision of Authority to this extent conveyed vide minutes of meeting dated 24th April 2020 is also declared null and void. Consequently, all actions taken by the Chairman pursuant to the delegated powers for suspension of Broadcast Media Licenses are strike down. The petition with pending application is disposed of accordingly.”
The actual decision to delegate did provide that the Chairman, “after exercising such powers”, was to “bring such action into the notice of the Authority at its forthcoming meeting”. However, this “condition”, even if it could be so called (and in our view it cannot) was inconsistent with the proper understanding and application of the power of delegation, as set out herein above. In the legal sense therefore no condition was at all imposed. In our view this was an error that went to the very root of how s. 13 is to be understood and lawfully applied. The High Court was therefore right in requiring that the delegation could only be in terms of, and subject to, legally relevant and sustainable conditions imposed by rules. The delegation being legally unsustainable was correctly quashed and set aside. The appeal stood dismissed. .....Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority =VS= Pakistan Broadcasters Association, (Civil), 2025(2) [19 LM (SC) 20] ....View Full Judgment