PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court on Tuesday sought minutes of a federal cabinet meeting, which had decided to proscribe Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) in Oct last year.

A bench consisting of Justice ljaz Anwar and Justice Oazi Jawad Ehsanullah fixed March 11 for next hearing of a petition jointly filed by PTM founder Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen and nine other leaders against a ban on their rights movement as well as them.

Petitioners have requested court to declare illegal ban on PTM under Section 11B of Anti-Terrorism Act and the petitioners under Section 11-EE.

They have sought court`s orders for federal government to remove PTM from the list of banned outfits in First Schedule of ATA and their names from ATA`s Fourth Schedule.

They also requested the court to declare that sections 11-B and 11-EE, amended through Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Act, 2014, were in conflict with Article 10-A of the Constitution that guaranteed right to fair trial and due process of law.

Petitioners sought orders for Section 11-D of the law, which dealt with keeping of an organisation under observation, to be read as a mandatory precursor to proscription under Section 11-B. The petitioners` counsel, Attaullah Kundi, contended that federal government placed ban on PTM and declared it proscribed and claimed that federal cabinet had given approval for it.

He stated that so far no decision of the cabinet was made public in that regard. He added that the grounds for proscription had also not been given to petitioners.