ISLAMABAD: The Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) constituted a five-member committee on Monday to hash out criteria for the appointment of judges, as well as selection of judges, for the Constitutional Benches of the Supreme Court and the four high courts.

Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail will be the committee’s chairman. Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Usman Awan and Senator Farooq Hamid Naek will represent the government while Senator Syed Ali Zafar will represent the opposition.

Muhammad Ahsan Bhoon, who was appointed as member of the JCP last week, and Niaz Muhamad Khan, the JCP’s interim secretary, will be the other members of the committee.

During the last meeting of the commission on Feb 28, the JCP had decided to constitute a committee to draft objective criteria for appointment of judges under Article 175A (4) of the Constitution and for selection of judges for the Constitutional Benches (CB) under Articles 191A and 202A.

The committee will propose a set of legal instruments for thrashing out the criteria as a valid legal document.

The decision to form the committee was made after Justice Aminuddin Khan suggested the inclusion of five more judges to the bench during the previous meeting. But the PTI representatives argued that the CB head should not have the authority to decide which judge should be made part of the bench. Instead, they suggested, all SC judges should be included in the constitutional bench.

Two senior members of the commission — Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Munib Akhtar — had also opposed the addition of more judges to the Constitutional Bench. The PTI chairman, Gohar Ali Khan, and Senator Syed Ali Zafar had insisted that a procedure for adding more judges to the CB be thrashed out first before making additions.

During the last meeting, the JCP had expanded the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Bench to 13 members by adding five judges.

The meeting, chaired by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Yahya Afridi, decided by a majority of its total membership the nomination of Justice Hashim Khan Kakar, Justice Salahuddin Panhwar, Justice Shakeel Ahmad, Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim as judges for the Constitutional Bench.

The CB earlier comprised Justice Aminuddin Khan, Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhail, Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar, Justice Ayesha A. Malik, Justice Hassan Azhar Rizvi, Justice Musarrat Hilali, Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan and Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2025