ISLAMABAD: The Pakis­tan Bar Council (PBC) has asked the Supreme Court to restrain all those judges of the superior judiciary against whom complaints are pending before the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) from performing their duties.

In a petition moved on Saturday, Raheel Kamran Sheikh, who is chairman of the PBC’s Human Rights Committee, has also asked the apex court to order the SJC to publicly disclose the number of references it had received against superior court judges, as well as the number of cases where proceedings had been initiated.

The SJC ordinarily conducts its business behind closed doors and sends its recommendations to the president, who has the prerogative over whether to make the decision public or not.

The petition calls on the SJC to expeditiously dispose of the complaints pending before it, and contends that the council enjoyed a unique place in the country’s constitutional structure: being tasked with ensuring the accountability of an organ of the state that has the ultimate duty of constitutional interpretation, enforcement of fundamental rights and ensuring the rule of law.

The council’s silence, the petition stated, was a matter of concern for the bar and citizens of Pakistan. “To say that judges must be independent ... is not to say that they must be so independent as to be unaccountable,” the petitioner maintained, insisting that judicial accountability was the cardinal principle of any justice system.

In Pakistan, the only system of accountability for superior court judges was enshrined in Article 209 of the Constitution, which deals with the SJC — an institution which can inquire into allegations levelled against superior court judges.

Though it may be in public interest to withhold information about the nature of a complaint to avoid scandalizing a judge for as long as he serves on the bench, there is no justification for withholding information regarding the total number of complaints received by the commission, the period of time during which such complaints were received and their current status.

A lack of such information had contributed to a growing perception that the SJC was a dysfunctional institution, the petition argued.

Earlier, at its 211th meeting held on June 13, 2015, the PBC adopted a resolution requesting the SJC to decide pending references “on merit and without any further delay”.

Even the current Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, in an address to the legal fraternity at the beginning of the judicial year, had declared his intentions to expeditiously hear and dispose of references pending before the SJC.

However, no new information has been disclosed with reference to the status of any reference or complaint that is being heard by the council.

This, the petitioner maintained, violated Article 19A of the Constitution and led to an apprehension of violation of other fundamental rights of the citizens, including the right to fair trial and the right to due process.

The petition acknowledged that a judge against whom a reference has been filed under Article 209 can be amenable to pressures and exploitations and may readily compromise his integrity, impartiality and independence.

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2016