ISLAMABAD: Accepting an appeal against registrar office objections, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a set of four appeals of former president Asif Ali Zardari be fixed for hearing after the winter vacation.

The former president had challenged the registrar office order to return his plea in which he had sought transfer of corruption references against him from Islamabad to any other accountability court in Karachi.

Justice Umar Ata Bandial while heading a three-judge bench overruled the registrar office objections and ordered to fix the appeals next year.

On Nov 14, senior counsel Senator Farooq H. Naek on behalf of the former president had instituted chamber appeals against the Nov 10 decision of the assistant registrar to return four separate petitions on the grounds that these applications amounted to second review of earlier decisions of the apex court and, therefore, could not be entertained.

The former president is facing four different references at the Islamabad accountability court, namely the fake bank accounts reference, Park Lane Estate Private Ltd reference, Thatta Water Supply reference and Toshakhana corruption reference.

The former president was indicted by the anti-graft court in the Toshakhanna (gift repository) reference on Sept 9 as well as on the charges of money laundering for creating benami properties through Park Lane Estate Pvt Ltd on Aug 10, Thatta Water Supply reference on Oct 5 as well as in the fake bank accounts reference.

The chamber appeals had pleaded before the court that the registrar order was not sustainable in the law as well as the case law enunciated by the Supreme Court. Moreover, for the safe administration of justice, it is the constitutional right of the petitioner to knock at the door of the apex court, but the registrar order shows that the rights of the appellants have been blocked at the institutional level.

The question of the returning the applications on non-maintainability relates to the judicial work which cannot be taken up on the executive side or through delegation of powers for exercising judicial work, the application emphasised.

The application highligh­ted that the Nov 10 order was signed by assistant regis­trar for registrar, which was in violation of Order 5, Rule I of the Supreme Court Rules. The assistant registrar did not consider the law and had arbitrarily returned the application of the appellant, the application argued, adding that he did not take into consideration paragraph 38 of earlier directions of the apex court on Jan 7, 2019, in which though directions were issued to NAB to initiate corruption references on fake accounts at the Islam­abad accountability court, but it was also made clear that the matter could be resurrected at any time on the application of any of the parties or at the discretion of the implementation bench.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2020