Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial has accepted the incumbent government’s plea to the previous PTI government’s curative review petition against Justice Qazi Faez Isa, a senior puisne judge of the Supreme Court (SC), it emerged on Friday.

The former PTI government had pleaded before the SC that its April 26, 2021 majority judgement in the Justice Isa review case should not be left in the field for allegedly being unjust. The SC, on April 26, 2021, by a majority of six to four overturned its 2020 decision to order an investigation by tax authorities into the properties of Justice Isa’s children and wife.

The curative appeal was moved on behalf of President Dr Arif Alvi, former prime minister Imran Khan, former law minister Dr Farogh Naseem and law secretary.

Subsequently, the incumbent government had sought the curative appeal’s withdrawal and filed an application in the apex court for the same, the ruling on which was reserved by the CJP on April 10 after a chamber hearing.

In the written order issued today, he ruled: “The instant civil miscellaneous applications filed by the appellants are accordingly allowed and their curative review petitions are dismissed as withdrawn.”

The order, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, said 18 applications had been submitted to the court for the withdrawal of the previous government’s curative petition.

During the April 10 hearing, it said, the attorney general for Pakistan and the additional attorney general for Pakistan had appeared before the CJP on behalf of the applicants.

The CJP observed in the order that the bar on filing a second review petition was declared in the Supreme Court 1980 Rules in the following words: “After the final disposal of the first application for review no subsequent application for review shall lie to the court and consequently shall not be entertained by the registry.”

He also cited a previous SC ruling in this regard, stating that “under the current scheme of the law the appellants appear to be precluded from filing a review against the subject judgement because it has finally disposed of the review petitions filed against the original judgement”.

Citing another court ruling, the CJP observed that “our jurisprudence recognises the court’s suo motu jurisdiction under Article 184(3) and Article 188 read with Article 187 of the Constitution to re-visit, review or set aside its judgements/orders that have finally disposed of the first review petitions.

“However, such jurisdiction has so far not been invoked by the Court in the present matter.”

The order further said parties that filed the curative petition had not disputed that the existence of this jurisdiction had not been considered by the court until now.

“In fact, all the judgements cited by them in support of their curative review petitions reiterate what has been held above: that a second review is barred by law and that the court alone is empowered, if so inclined, to re-visit, review or set aside any of its previous judgements/orders,” it added.

Citing a lack of “an enabling jurisdiction that allows an aggrieved or concerned party to file a second review”, the order said the “appellants’ curative review petitions appear to be not maintainable”.

In the above circumstances, it added, the ordinary course of action would have been to refer the matter to the court for a conclusive determination on its maintainability. However, the appellants were now seeking the withdrawal of the curative review petitions.

“This right of the appellants to withdraw their curative review petitions is acknowledged by the law,” the order said, adding that “the appellants retain the unconditional right to withdraw their curative review petitions filed against the subject judgement”.

“This result is, however, without prejudice to what has been noted above, namely, that the pendency of proceedings or the presence of a party is not necessary for the court to exercise suo motu jurisdiction. All that is required for the court to act is cognisable information,” the order read.