KARACHI: National Assembly Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has called for an amendment to the procedure of judicial appointments, claiming that the existing system was plagued with favouritism, Dawn.com reported on Saturday.

In an appearance on the DawnNews show Doosra Rukh, Mr Ashraf said: “Unfortunately, it has come to the fore that even [in the process of judicial appointments in the Judi­cial Commission] there is a matter of likes and dislikes.”

“Some chamber becomes a favourite and [judges] start coming from there. If you go further back before this, then the sons of judges all became judges,” the speaker of the lower house said.

The PPP leader, who had become premier in June 2012 after then-prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani’s disqualification on contempt charges, said the parliament must look into the matter and its relevant committee be empowered.

He termed the passage of the 19th Amendment in 2011, when his own PPP was in power, an “injustice” with parliament, adding that he was told about a “threat” at the time that all previous amendments by the then-government would be struck off if the 19th Amendment was not passed.

The 19th Amendment envisaged a new system for appointments to the superior courts, aiming at neutralising a probable source of conflict between the judiciary and the executive. The amendment also raised the number of senior judges who would be members of the Judicial Commission to four.

Under the amendment, recommendations for the appointments of ad hoc judges in the superior cou­rts were to be made by the chief justice of Pakistan in consultation with the Judicial Commission.

Moreover, it said that in case of the National Assembly’s dissolution, members of the parliamentary committee could be drawn from the Senate alone.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2023