ISLAMABAD, May 17: Some light remarks about offers of lunch to judges were made in the midst of serious arguments in the Supreme Court on Thursday on the powers of the Supreme Judicial Council to proceed against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.

A 13-member larger bench, hearing a set of 23 identical petitions challenging the filing of the reference against the chief justice, composition of the SJC and its competence to try the chief justice, decided to sit from Monday to Thursday each week to decide the petitions.

The luncheon issue cropped up when Malik Qayyum, defending the government in the petition of the Watan Party, cited the case “Federation versus Akram Sheikh” in which it had been observed that a judge should not even hear a party with whom he had friendly relations and said that some judges having a lunch had hit the headlines in some newspapers. “Had I taken a lunch with some judge, I also would have been mentioned in the newspapers,” he said.

The reference was obviously to a news item abut two senior judges on the larger bench having lunch with government’s top aides directly involved in the judicial battle relating to the removal of the chief justice.

Later, in a code of conduct issued for the media, the Supreme Court described the controversy as unfounded and an insinuation by the media, explaining the lunch by two judges in the Islamabad Club with Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada and Attorney- General Makhdoom Ali Khan was a mere coincidence.

On Thursday, Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday, heading the bench, said in a lighter vein that nobody had ever taken him to lunch and expressed the wish that the counsel should take him to lunch after the day’s hearing.

“I and Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan will take all the judges to lunch to end the controversy once and for all,” Mr Qayyum suggested.

The idea was, however, rejected by Mr Ahsan, representing the chief justice, saying he was not in the habit of having lunches with judges when his cases were pending with them. “All during this period, I kept this secret fully to my chest and never mentioned the controversy despite a lot of persuasion,” he said, adding that he had received 200 text messages per hour in a day, urging him to raise the issue during the hearing in the court.

“Parties and lunches never influence a judge if he is a judge,” Justice Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi observed.

“I was wondering whether we judges would stand disqualified as we are close friends of the chief justice,” Justice Faqir Mohammad Khokhar observed.

However, Justice Ramday explained that the judges were not close friends of the chief justice, but his colleagues working closely with him.

He also observed that the real stakeholders to institutions like the superior judiciary were the people of the country and not the judges or court officers performing the duty of dispensing justice.

Mr Qayyum argued that the chief justice could be proceeded against in the SJC because he was similar to other judges of the Supreme Court. “If we accept the position taken by the chief justice that he is different from other judges, then all the protection enjoyed by other judges will not be available to him and he can be removed even by a simple notification by the federal government.”

“Even this is not necessary, a letter is enough,” Justice Ramday observed in a lighter vein.

On the maintainability of the petitions, Mr Qayyum argued that the SJC was not a court of law but a constitutional body comprising highest judicial officers.