December 06, 2008	Saturday	Zilhaj 7, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Dec 5: A controversy over additional marks given to a daughter of Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar in the higher secondary school examination deepened on Friday when the Islamabad High Court sealed the relevant records of the federal board and the Supreme Court received a petition seeking unseating of the chairman of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Education for “aggressively pursuing the matter”.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court had stayed a probe by the standing committee into the matter. 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 apex court or the Islamabad High Court.

However, a defiant Abid Sher Ali, the chairman of committee, said the committee would meet on Dec 15 as scheduled.

Iftikhar Gillani, a constitutional expert, is of the view that neither the judiciary nor parliament could interfere in each other’s affairs and says that standing committees were part of parliament.

“Like the parliament cannot interfere in the affairs of the Supreme Court or discuss the conduct of a judge under Article 68 of the Constitution, the court also cannot interfere in the affairs of parliament under Article 66(5) of the Constitution,” he observed.

Senator S.M. Zafar, another senior constitutional expert, was a bit cautious but said that since the matter had been taken up by the apex court, an interpretation regarding the supremacy of parliament and its committees would also be decided by it.

Leader of the House in Senate Mian Raza Rabbani said

parliament was “supreme over all other institutions functioning through or under the Constitution”.

“No institution functioning through or under the Constitution can impinge upon the sovereignty of parliament and it is only the Senate chairman and the National Assembly speaker who can control or regulate the procedure and functioning of parliament,” he said in a statement.

“The 1973 Constitution provides a trichotomy of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary and it will be in the interest of democratic transition that this trichotomy is respected at all institutions.”

He said that traditionally and historically the sovereignty of parliament had always been guarded jealously.

Taking up the petition of the Tehrik Falah-i-Pakistan (TFP) filed by its president Mohammad Azam Khan Sultanpuri, IHC Chief Justice Sardar Mohammad Aslam had ordered sealing of all relevant records, including the examination papers of Farah Hameed Dogar. The court adjourned the hearing by clubbing identical petitions on the subject for the second week of January.

Advocate Agha Tariq, legal adviser to the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (FBISE), submitted the records before the court.

Mr Sultanpuri in his petition sought a declaration that giving additional marks to the student by the FBISE after the re-evaluation process by ignoring relevant rules was illegal.

Shortly afterwards, a petition under the enforcement of fundamental rights was filed in the Supreme Court. It sought a direction for the National Assembly speaker to initiate a disqualification process against the standing committee chairman by referring the matter to the chief election commissioner.

The petition also requested the apex court to restrain Abid Sher Ali from exercising his authority as chairman of the committee. “The chairman should also be restrained from demanding resignation of the incumbent chief justice or discuss his conduct,” it said.

PML-N information secretary Ahsan Iqbal criticised the sealing of examination records and said that it amounted to hampering the proceedings of the matter which was before the standing committee.

Meanwhile, civil society organisations supporting the lawyers’ movement for reinstatement of deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, have also demanded resignation of the incumbent chief justice.