December 05, 2008	Friday	Zilhaj 6, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Dec 4: The Supreme Court stayed on Thursday a probe by the National Assembly’s standing committee on education into an increase in the marks obtained by a daughter of Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar in the higher secondary school examination.

However, committee chairman Abid Sher Ali said he would issue a notice to the education ministry to give its opinion on the matter and the committee would meet on Dec 15, as scheduled.

“We don’t take dictation from others and nobody can stop us because the matter concerns supremacy of parliament,” he told Dawn.

Taking up a petition in his chamber, Justice Syed Zawwar Hussain Jaffery restrained the standing committee, its members or any other forum from proceeding on the issue till the controversy remained sub judice before the Supreme Court or the Islamabad High Court.Raja Abdur Rehman, a former attorney of the federal government, said the proceedings of the standing committee had been restrained under Article 68 of the Constitution which barred parliament from discussing the conduct of a judge of the Supreme Court or a high court.

He said Attorney General Sardar Latif Khosa and the respondents in the petition had been summoned. No date was fixed for hearing the petition filed by a former chairman of the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Commodore (retd) Shamshad.

The respondents are the federal government, the FBISE chairman, the board through its secretary, Tehrik Falah-i-Pakistan (TFP) and its president Azam Khan Sultanpuri and the standing committee through its chairman.

The petition was filed after the rejection in the morning by the Islamabad High Court of two applications to implead the standing committee as a party and stay its proceedings on the grounds that the court could not interfere in parliamentary proceedings.

The high court was hearing a petition of the TFP seeking a declaration that the grant of 20 additional marks to the student by the FBISE during re-evaluation by ignoring rules was illegal.

The petition filed in the Supreme Court contended that Mr Shamshad, as chairman of the board, had dealt with and disposed of the application of Farah Hameed Dogar of the intermediate class in accordance with the rules of the procedure. Since the candidate happened to be the daughter of a judicial dignitary, he alleged, certain “mischievous” elements had maligned the petitioner by blowing up the issue out of proportion.

The petitioner also alleged that the chairman of the committee who was a relative of Mian Nawaz Sharif had started parallel proceedings by converting the committee into a judicial forum despite the matter being sub judice before the high court.