ISLAMABAD, April 26: Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Thursday requested the Supreme Court to constitute a full court and hear from next week his petition challenging the President Pervez Musharraf’s move to file a reference against him on a day to day basis.
Filed under order 33, rule 6 of the Supreme Court Rules, 1980, the fresh application stated that several important constitutional questions concerning the independence of judiciary, access to justice and very existence of the apex court itself had been raised in the main petition.
When the petition was taken up by a three-member Supreme Court bench early this week, one of its members had declined to head the bench for being a signatory to the Supreme Judicial Council’s endorsement of the presidential reference and had requested Acting Chief Justice Rana Bhagwandas to constitute a full court to hear a number of identical petitions filed on the issue.
"It has been a long standing practice of this court to constitute full court for the consideration of important constitutional issues," the petitioner said in his application.
“Needless to say that his petition is one of its kinds never undertaken by this court in fact the constitutional issues and questions involved in the petition are unprecedented,” the application said.
Nineteen different cases from Pakistan’s judicial history right from the 1972 Asma Jillani case to 2006 Munir A. Malik case have been cited by the applicant to underline that all these cases were heard by a full court or larger benches.
It said the chief justice was unlawfully and illegally restrained from performing his functions as a judge and the chief justice of the apex court and was sent on forced leave through unprecedented executive orders. At the same time, on unfounded and baseless allegations the petitioner has been required to appear before the Supreme Judicial Council where proceedings are continuing while the petitioner has prayed for a stay of the proceedings.
In the main petition, the chief justice had raised as many as 132 questions, including the competence of the SJC to try the Chief Justice of Pakistan, constitution of the Supreme Judicial Council without the CJP, personal bias and prospects of advancement of some of the members of the council, alleged mala fide and collateral purpose of the referring authority and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, the haste with which the referring authority (the president) acted against the CJP, illegal suspension and forced leave, illegal assumption of office by the acting chief justice, executive assault on the independence of judiciary and proceedings in camera.
Meanwhile, two more petitions were filed before the Supreme Court on Thursday -- one by Sindh High Court Bar Association President Abrar Hasan seeking a declaration that the reference against the chief justice was frivolous, baseless and mala fide and the other by Maulvi Iqbal Haider pleading for a declaration that President Pervez Musharraf enjoyed the power to submit the reference before the SJC against the chief justice under article 209 of the Constitution.
