ISLAMABAD, May 3: Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Thursday requested the Supreme Court to dismiss a government’s application seeking expansion of a five-member bench, hearing petitions against the filing of the presidential reference and the composition of the Supreme Judicial Council, into a full court.
On Wednesday, President Pervez Musharraf as the referring authority had pleaded before the Supreme Court to turn the five-member bench into a full court because the existing bench comprised four junior judges and an ad hoc judge whose appointment had been challenged in the apex court.
The bench in question — comprising Justice M. Javed Buttar, Justice Nasirul Mulk, Justice Raja Fayyaz Ahmed, Justice Ijaz Ahmed and Justice Hamid Ali Mirza — will commence from Monday day-to-day hearing to decide a number of petitions questioning the filing of the reference against the chief justice and the composition of the SJC.
In the freshly moved application, the chief justice accused the respondent (referring authority) of taking a “malicious U-turn for ulterior motive” questioning the longstanding practice of the court which the respondent had itself admitted earlier.
The government side had opposed the idea of full court when it had been requested by the chief justice on April 27.
Defending the ad hoc judge in the bench, the chief justice stated in the application that though the appointment of the judge was on ad hoc basis, he otherwise had been on the bench of the apex court for more time than other judges and had participated in most important cases heard by larger or full courts.
In any case, he said, there was no distinction between a judge and an ad hoc judge of the Supreme Court in terms of exercise of judicial powers. Both held constitutional offices and neither could be criticised or considered less powerful than the other, he said.
The application also cited the 2006 Pakistan Steel Mills case where two ad hoc judges were present on the bench and the counsel for the respondent (Sharifuddin Pirzada) had also appeared then for the federation.
It alleged that the application of the respondent was malicious, in fact an attempt to prolong the hearing of the petitions before the five-member bench by maligning the exercise of power by the acting chief justice.
On the face of it, the referring authority’s request was inconsistent with its earlier stand in which it had argued that fixing of a matter for a particular date and constitution of a bench to hear a particular case was the prerogative of the chief justice and no party to the case had any right to ask for the same. Therefore, it was liable to be dismissed and disregarded by the acting chief justice, the application said.
ISLAMABAD, May 3: Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Thursday requested the Supreme Court to dismiss a government’s application seeking expansion of a five-member bench, hearing petitions against the filing of the presidential reference and the composition of the Supreme Judicial Council, into a full court.
